Jon Blower gave a short introduction to the main concepts of Semantic Web / Linked Data and gave some examples of their application in practice. Jon also talked about some of the benefits and challenges associated with adopting these techniques in real situations, drawing particularly on examples from the MELODIES project and other related efforts.
Dr Jon Blower is the Chief Technology Officer for the Institute for Environmental Analytics (IEA), a partnership of academic and commercial organisations, based at the University of Reading. He leads a number of collaborative projects in the area of environmental informatics and visualisation, applying advanced techniques in information technology to make environmental information more accessible and useful for researchers and decision-makers. These projects have addressed a wide range of sectors, including renewable energy, transport, city planning, agriculture and insurance (see http://www.the-iea.org/projects/).
Karel Charvat talked about the FOODIE data model and the FOODIE ontology and demonstrated how these principles are implemented in the DataBio project He also discussed how we can develop a standard API for satellite data for farm information management systems.
Karel Charvat graduated in theoretical cybernetics. He is a member of International Society for Precision Agriculture, Research Data Alliance, Club of Ossiach, CAGI, and CSITA. He was in period 2005 – 2007 President of European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture Food and Environment (EFITA), OGC Agriculture DWG, he is vicepresined of Club of Ossiach,. He was organiser on many hackathons, where as most important were INSPIRE Hacks I and II and MEDHackathon. He work on implementation on national INSPIRE Geoportall. Now he is also active in Plan4all assotiation. He has long time experience in ICT for Environment, transport, Agriculture and Precision Farming. Now he is one from promotors of Open and Big Data in Agriculture in Europe. Participation in projects: Wirelessinfo, Premathmod, EMIRES, REGEO, RuralWins, Armonia, aBard, EPRI Start, Ami@netfood, AMI4For, Voice, Naturnet Redime, Mobildat, SpravaDat, Navlog, c@r, Humboldt, WINSOC, Plan4all, Habitats, Plan4business, SmartOpenData, FOODIE, SDI4Apps, AgriXchange, FOODIE, SDI4Apps, OTN, DataBio, SmartAgriHub, AFarCloud, EO4Agri.