A sustainable method for publishing interoperable open data on the web

Abstract

Smart cities need (sensor) data for better decision-making. However, while there are vast amounts of data available about and from cities, an intermediary is needed that connects and interprets (sensor) data on a Web-scale. Today, governments in Europe are struggling to publish open data in a sustainable, predictable and cost-effective way. Our research question considers what methods for publishing Linked Open Data time series, in particular air quality data, are suitable in a sustainable and cost-effective way. Furthermore, we demonstrate the cross-domain applicability of our data publishing approach through a different use case on railway infrastructure—Linked Open Data. Based on scenarios co-created with various governmental stakeholders, we researched methods to promote data interoperability, scalability and flexibility. The results show that applying a Linked Data Fragments-based approach on public endpoints for air quality and railway infrastructure data, lowers the cost of publishing and increases availability due to better Web caching strategies.