Linked Data for Development:Managing and sharing knowledge in the

developing part of the world

Victor de BoerWeb and Media group, Computer Science,

The Network Institute , VU University Amsterdam

With significant input from Christophe Guéret, Stefan Schlobach, Chris van Aart, Anna Bon, Hans Akkermans, Nana Gyan, Stephane Boyera, Bernie Innocenti, Walter

Bender, Claudia Urrea, Amadou Tangara. Mary Allen,…

About me

Victor de Boer

Assistant professor

Web & Media Group, Network Institute

VU University Amsterdam

Semantic Technologies, Linked Data

Cultural Heritage

Digital History

Linked Data for Development

Almost half the world — over three billion people — lives on less than $2.50 a day

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

ICT4DInformation and Communication Technology for Development

• Technology is a development tool– Education– Healthcare– Livelihood– etc.

• Leveraging communication independently of physical/geographical barriers

• Improving transparency, accountability, efficiency of governments

• Developing nations can leapfrog directly into the information age, jumping many phases of immature technologies

Based on Sbc4d.com

But…

Not old computers, but new Computer Science

W4RA and Voice access to information

CAUTION! DIGITAL DIVIDE AHEAD

Img: Internet World Stats

Digital divide in classrooms

Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa

Washington, 13-15 May 2013 11

W4RA : Information exchange and knowledge sharing in rural Africa

World Wide Web as Instrument of Empowerment

“Our success will be measured by how well we foster thecreativity of our children. Whether future scientists havethe tools to cure diseases.Whether people, in developed and developing economiesalike, can distinguish reliable information from propagandaor commercial chaff.

Whether the next generation will build systems that supportdemocracy and accountable debate.

I hope that you will join this global effort to advance theWeb to empower people.”

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web:

Can the Web (be made to) mean something forknowledge sharing even under veryconstraining conditions?

No internet, no computer, no electricity

Multitude of languages, levels of literacy

Information sharing needs

• Agriculture– Market Prices – Business opportunities– Support– Sharing indigenous

knowledge– Etc.

• Health– Prevention– Access to healthcare– Detection of disease

outbreak– etc.

• Education• Etc.

Based on Sbc4d.com

Web Access: Current State

Based on Sbc4d.com

Mobile phones

Many examples with SMS

Medic.frontlinesms.com

Low-literate users

• One of the grand challenges of ICT4D

• Especially prevalent among the rural poor

• Cf. Accessibility here

– Web design http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

Quiz

• Literacy in Zimbabwe

A. 0-30%

B. 30-50%

C. 50-70%

D. 70-100%

Quiz

• Literacy in Zimbabwe

A. 0-30%

B. 30-50%

C. 50-70%

D. 70-100% <- 91%

Quiz

• Literacy in Mali

A. 0-30%

B. 30-50%

C. 50-70%

D. 70-100%

Quiz

• Literacy in Mali

A. 0-30% <- 27.7% (20% among women)

B. 30-50%

C. 50-70%

D. 70-100%

Varies greatly in continent

Data.worldbank.com

Icon-based interfaces

• Example: Indrani Medhi– Correlation between ease of using hierarchical menu’s

(even without text) and literacy

Interaction design for low-literacy communities

Feature phones

Icon-based interaction

All phones: Voice-based user interfaces

• Not exclusive to ICT4D (cf Siri, In-car systems)

• Very suitable for oral cultures

Voice menus for interactive information access

• Integrate local community radios and mobile ICT for knowledge sharing

• Better support and integrate local languages in voice-based services

– Development of appropriate speech elements (text-to-speech and Speech recognition)

• Investigate self-sustainability

– Develop appropriate business models

– In collaboration with local communities.

•No. 1 source of information•Interactive radio programs•Huge listening base

Radio

‘Small Languages’

• Large language populations: English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch…– Large number of textual corpora available, great economic

value to localization

• Small languages: Frisian, Bambara (3M speakers), – Small number of textual corpora available, some economic

value to localization

• Very small languages: Bomu (30K speakers)– No textual corpora available, very low economic value to

localization

(adapted) Living Labs

• Involvement of local communities– Trust and ownership

– Co-creation

• Bottom-up: field visits, workshops, demos, roadshows, etc

• Local communities: innovation co-creation, “Living Labs” socio-technical approach– Use case gathering

– Observation and prototyping

– Test, adapt

From 20 use cases to 3 voice systems

Market Information

Citizen Journalism

Event Organiser

1 m-Milk ordering and delivery service of Tominian Milk producers and NGO2 m-Tree protection alert service Sahel Eco Farmers and NGO3 mobile-web Event organizer for vaccination of herds Farmers4 m-Farmer-expert directory service Farmer organization5 NGO info-line about legal issues in several languages Sahel Eco6 Leave announcement or select your favourite song Radio7 Shea butter and honey trading service Radio and Sahel Eco8 Access radio programs and announcements on your phone Radio9 Gourcy seed producers seed certification service Farmer organization10 Radio questions and answers about agricultural issues Radio11 m-collective purchase organizing service Local buyers12 m-GIS regreening service Sahel Eco13 m-Farmer social network Sahel Eco14 mobile-web regional market system Farmer organization15 Sahel Eco portal to Regreening and access to m-services Sahel Eco16 m-event organizer for re-greening events Sahel Eco, farmers

M-agro Use Case Context: Regreening in Africa

Local market data

Communiqué

GSM/Voice interface

Web Interface Text-To-Speech

Community radioSahel Eco operativeBuyers

“Slot and Filler” Text-to-Speech

English:

Bambara:

15 liters of offered by Zakari Diarra

15_ba.wav L_ba.wav Of_ba.wav

Spoken Language Elements Repository

honey

Voice Interface design forlow-(computer) literate users

•Design guidelines (Deepak Chhettri)•Evaluation experiment (Onur Akgun and Serdar Parlak)•Access to DBpedia / Wikipedia (Rianne Nieland)

Deployment

Mo

bile u

sers

VOICES User Content

VOICES Platform & Toolbox

Telecom Access

Radio ProgramOutput

Web Access

MobileTraining Lab

Local ICT developers

Speech

Tools

Local end-users

Sustainablebusiness models

Mobileaccess

PRODUCTS

Linked Data for Development

Web of Documents (WWW)Linked Documents

Web of DataLinked Data

Why the Semantic Web?

• Information (from NGOs) in silos– Specific products– Specific communities

• Lot of knowledge is lost due to lack of publication

Sharing (heterogeneous) knowledge is essential

• LD is well-suited because of:– Language-agnostic– Interface-agnostic– De-centralised authoring

• Slicing

– Re-usability• Local• Global

Img: flickr/elcovs

Sem.tech/Linked Data should be made

1. usable on small, affordable, hardware deployed in various connectivity contexts;

2. accessible to individuals with varied cultural backgrounds / literacy levels;

3. relevant and directly useful to the target public they aim to empower.

Infrastructure

Interface Relevancy

Re-use: EcoMash

Henk Kroon

Low-powered hardware

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)mission and vision

• Develop (and deploy) a low-cost laptop in order to revolutionize how we educate the world's children

• What motivates learning is not carrots or sticks, but rather:– autonomy,– mastery, and– a sense of purpose.

• A laptop makes learning more flexible: Children learn by teaching and actively helping each other; the teacher is free to focus expertise where it is needed

How is learning with the XO different?

OLPC

Computer for learningStudent-centricTeacher as mentorVoice, textLearning to learnCritical thinking

Efficient Knowledge sharing with SemanticXO and ERS

Mesh VS Infrastructure network

Infrastructure: Low-powered hardware and Mesh networking

ENTITY REGISTRY SYSTEM (ERS)• Fully decentralised Linked Data publication platform• Works under any kind of connectivity context• Tracks back individual edits back to their authors• Simple and versatile• Open Source https://github.com/ers-devs• Low resource demanding

... and open for contributions so don'thesitate to fork it!

Christophe Gueret

Hybrid solution

http://www.firstmilesolutions.com/documents/DakNet_IEEE_Computer.pdf

Sneakernet

Throughput

Latency

“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”

—Andrew Tanenbaum

Linked Open Data for Development

International Aid Transparancy Initiative

“IATI is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to improve the transparency of aid in order to increase its effectiveness in tackling poverty.”

As of 2013, over 150 donors, NGOs and governmentshave registered to the IATIregistry.org by publishingtheir aid activities in this XML standard.

Now: 180+

Linking datasets

http://iati2lod.appspot.com/4. How does violent conflict in recipient countries affect aid activities?

5. How does aid spending as registered in the IATI standard compare to World Bank indicators?

LinkedIDS

Links to DBPedia

IDS: document 0001 Theme:”Food Security”

DBPedia:”Food Security”

Analysis of approaches to understanding and addressing food security issues; examination of the structural causes of food insecurity and different policy responses

Theme:” Food aid emergencies ”

Person:”David Pimentel”

Organisation:”FAO”

“Voedselzekerheid”@NL

Links to IATI

IDS: document 0003 Theme 'Higher education’

IATI Sector:”Higher Education”

Theme Education

Organisation : UN Habitat

Activity: Multi donor fund to support civil society in democracy related issues

Degree and diploma programmes at universities, colleges and polytechnics; scholarships.

Pieter Nicolai (BSc)

Towards Development Informatics

www.worldwidesemanticweb.org

Rapid-prototyping knowledge sharing platform

(aka “The Box”)

ICT4D Course @

•MSc Computer Science course –this year 3rd time–Core Computer Science: CS4D

•Make students aware of importance of context•Hands-on experience•Train CS researchers in ICT4D

With the mainstream

Dev. countries can leapfrog directly into the information age,

jumping many phases of immature technologies

Img: flickr/n3v3rv0id

Linked Data is mainstream computer science research.

Test hypotheses in domains/environments

“The goal is to bring together top Computer Scientists who are willing to integrate development specific problems into their own respective research. Those experts will face common challenges: technologically, as well as legally, ethically, sociologically and politically, challenges that could be addressed more coherently in what we might call: Development Informatics.”

• Applied science in multidisciplinary domain• LD4D: Linked Data and Semantic web technologies

• HCI4D: voice interfaces, icon-based communication

• DS4D: distributed systems for low-connected environments

• Socio-technical system• Cultural, physical context plays important role in types of solutions, but also

Software engineering issues

Stefan Schlobach

http://www.voices.eu

http://w4ra.org

http://worldwidesemanticweb.org

v.de.boer@vu.nlvictordeboer.com

Questions?