[Talk-GB] W3C Invitation

[Andy Mabbett]

I gave the requested talk yesterday.

During preparatory discussions, it turned out that, while hosted by
IBM, the audience was a W3C working group, "Data on the web best
practice".  As such, the interest was no so much trees or gas pipes,
but the use of URIs (particularly linked data URIs)  in OSM.

Using trees and other examples, I described, and we then discussed,
how we tag entities in OSM, using UIDs but not necessarily URLs, and
issues facing data users who need to resolve those UIDs back to URLs;
for example:

    openplaques_plaque = 1536

to:

   http://openplaques.org/plaques/1536

To that end, I've just modified [[Template:KeyDescription]] by adding
two parameters:

   https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tag:historic%3Dmemorial&diff=prev&oldid=1010411

for "website" and "url_pattern"; see:

   https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:openplaques_plaque

of an example of how they're intended to be used (the label display
needs tweaking).

Other issues which are unhelpful to data re-users include keys with
missing documentation; redundant keys ("Key:openplaques_plaque" vs
"Key:openplaques_id"); ambiguous keys ("ref=1234" - ref in whose
database?) and the perennial problem of the lack of stable URIs for
entities in OSM. I have yet to solve that one...


On 4 March 2014 08:33, Brian Prangle <bprangle at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> We have an invitation from IBM to present at this meeting- suggested topic
> is below. Anyone up for this - either with the topic suggested or with a
> suitable alternative?
>
> Regards
>
> Brian
>
> A few weeks ago, we had a use case webinar with the CIO of the City of Palo
> Alto who told us about an local initiative to tag trees with lat/long,
> genus, size, etc.  During the call, we asked him if he also considered
> tagging the trees with URI's and of course he hadn't.  Following the call a
> colleague sent me an article about how tree roots often damage natural gas
> lines and lead to widespread gas leaks.  Methane is 20x more dangerous as a
> greenhouse gas than CO2, so gas leaks are a leading cause of global warming.
>
> We would like to find an openstreetmaps speaker who can talk about the value
> of mapping trees and gas lines, and many other things, with URI's.  Would
> you be able to discuss this?
>
> We will be meeting on March 31 and April 1 at IBM Southbank, and would love
> a presentation/discussion the morning or late afternoon of the 31st.  Would
> this topic and date fit?

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk