Press Release: LOD2 Project Launch |LOD2

New Technology Consortium Set To Change The Web As We Know It!

EU, Researchers, and Industry Leaders Seek to Transform Web of Linked Open Data into a Coherent Global Knowledge Space

LOD2 (Linked Open Data) is an EU co-funded project comprised of leading Linked Open Data technology researchers, companies, and service providers from across 7 European countries. Leveraging initial success across the Linked Open Data realm, the project is tasked with developing additional technology infrastructure and services that address new frontier challenges across government and industry.

LOD2 is 4-year collaborative research and development project, coordinated by the AKSW research group at Universität Leipzig that commences in September 2010. Consortium partners include: Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (Netherlands); National University of Ireland, Galway; Freie Universität Berlin; OpenLink Software (United Kingdom); Semantic Web Company (Austria); TenForce (Belgium); Exalead (France); Wolters Kluwer (Germany); and the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Expected project deliverables include:

enterprise-ready tools and methodologies generating and publishing Linked Data on a massive scale to the burgeoning Web of Linked Data.
a testbed and bootstrap network of high-quality, multi-domain, multi-lingual ontologies derived from sources such as Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap.
algorithms based on machine learning for automatically interlinking and meshing disparate data across the World Wide Web.
standards and methods for reliably tracking provenance, ensuring privacy, data security, and other vital data and information oriented quality of service factors.
adaptive tools for searching, browsing, and authoring of Linked Data.

Situation Analysis

In recent times, Linked Data has emerged as a paradigm for integrating and publishing structured data on the Web. Driven by grassroots community effort, with laser-like focus on the generation of Linked Data from heterogeneous and disparately located data sources, we now have a viable Web of Linked Data comprised of more than 20 billion facts culled from sources such as: Wikipedia (via DBpedia), BBC programming, MusicBrainz, Eurostat, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Data.Gov, Data.Gov.UK, and many others.

In addition to the public data oriented Linked Open Data cloud, there is a wealth of data within enterprise intranets that would also benefit immensely from Linked Data publishing and integration. The same applies to internal and external data meshes across extranets.

However, generation of Linked Data is really the beginning of a process that seeks to alleviate the potential for data and information overload. Organizations that embrace Linked Data ultimately seek to produce actionable knowledge that provides foundation for attaining agility levels critical for information age success. Thus, LOD2 is oriented towards development of infrastructure technology and best practices that fill the chasm between structured-linked-data and applied model logic & reasoning, en route to redefining the Web as we know it.

Partner Quotes

“LOD2″ states the project coordinator, Dr. Sören Auer, “is highly relevant for researchers, industry and citizens alike. Whether it is about the efficient integration of enterprise data, the open-standardized access to scientific publications and experiment data, or the opening of governmental data silos for the creative use by citizens, LOD2 will make significant contributions to evolving the Web into a coherent knowledge space.”

“Three years ago, we enthusiastically contributed the prowess of Virtuoso to the grassroots effort that lead to DBpedia and the Linked Open Data cloud that coalesced around it,” said Kingsley Idehen, President & CEO, OpenLink Software. “Today, we are both honored and enthusiastic about Virtuoso’s critical infrastructure role in this next generation LOD2 effort — focused on the challenges of BigData Integration, Change Sensitivity, Performance, and Scalability. LOD2 is going to go a long way towards materialization of the true potential and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web,” he added.

“Linked (Open) Data technologies offer a new way of data integration for the enterprise! Smooth interoperability between internal data sets can reduce costs as well as the enrichment of these data sets by external data can support new market intelligence paradigms for a better decision making.” said Martin Kaltenböck (Semantic Web Company, CFO)

“Semantic Markups on the Web could drive information reuse to enable scenarios and applications which we can now only dream of. The idea is extraordinarely compelling, but we know now it won’t simply realize itself. The LOD2 project is now a great opportunity for inspired and coordinated research: to crack this nut, to ultimately change the world.” said Dr. Giovanni Tummarello (DERI NUIG, Research Unit Leader)

“The publishing of ever more datasets by e.g. governments adds value for many key applications including business intelligence, which will drive the Linked Open Data (LOD) paradigm going forward. In the LOD2 project, CWI is working to increase the scalability and performance of querying interlinked datasets, in the context of its open-source analytical engine MonetDB.” said Dr. Peter Boncz (CWI)

“Linked (Open) Data will change the existing publishing paradigms! Creating high quality content for professional usage will remain an important factor in future publishing, but additional access points and new usage environments will equally define its success.” said Christian Dirschl (Wolters Kluwer Deutschland GmbH, Content Architect)

“An internet of data opens up tremendous opportunities for our corporate and government customers. We intend to be on the forefront of this evolution” said Bastiaan Deblieck (TenForce partner and business development manager)

“Enterpise search is all about providing correct, complete, and appropriate information to the employee and decision maker. LOD2 promises to not only allow internal company information to be linked up to the growing amount of Open Data on the web, but to also provide the mechanisms for validating the source of this data, providing surer value to the enterprise.” said Gregory Grefenstette (Exalead, Chief Science Officer)

Special Offers

The free PUBLINK Linked Open Data Consultancy is immediately available to all organizations that own large data-sets of public interest, seeking to inject these data-sets into the burgeoning Web of Linked Data. The application deadline for this offer is 15th of December 2010. Further information about PUBLINK is available from the LOD2 website, <http://lod2.eu/Article/Publink.html>.

Additional Information Sources

A German version of this press release is available here: Press Release LOD2-Kickoff in German.

Contact details

Scientific Project Leader — Dr. Sören Auer, Phone +49 341 97-32367, Fax +49 341 97-32329, Email auer@uni-leipzig.de
Project Manager — Nadine Jänicke, Phone +49 341 97-32310, Fax +49 341 97-32329, Email jaenicke@uni-leipzig.de

Address

Universität Leipzig, Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Institut für Informatik, Abt. Betriebliche Informationssysteme, z. Hd. Nadine Jänicke, Johannisgasse 26, 04103 Leipzig