Linked Open Data cloud takes shape

Linked Open Data Around-the-Clock (LATC) is a new project that aims to make it easier for government agencies and web developers across the globe to gain access to information from other organisations.

The project is being co-ordinated by the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at the National University of Ireland.

The Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud has doubled in size every 10 months since 2007, and is a collection of more than 200 datasets that offer more than 25 billion interlinked facts available from various domains. Some of these include governmental, media, user-generated and geographical data.

The LATC project hopes to make it easier to connect to the LOD cloud by offering support to web developers who want to build applications with linked data, and to data owners, such as government agencies.

"As fantastic as the LOD cloud is, there are still problems," said Dr Michael Hausenblas, LATC project co-ordinator.

"The linkage between datasets is not as dense as people want it to be, and there needs to be a lot more of these links to make the information available very powerful across different government agencies," he added.

"You can reuse what is already out there in terms of caches and browsers, and just build on what you have invested in. The overall mission we have is to support individuals and create a worldwide database that will allow them to easily consume and publish web data."