1. Piloting unique identifiers for geospatial data
Tuuli Pihlajamaa
Nordic Forum for Geography and Statistics / May 2017

2. Agenda of the presentation
1. Terms
2. Background for the pilot
3. Aims of the pilot
4. Results and notes
5. Future plans
Demos
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

3. 1. Terms used in the presentation
URI’s:
“A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a compact sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource.” (
RDF: Resource Description Framework,
“RDF is a standard model for data interchange on the Web.” (
“One of the key ingredients of Linked Data, and provides a generic graph-based data model for describing things, including their relationships with other things.“ (
JHS 193:
”JHS 193 Unique identifiers of the geographic information”, a national recommendation for Public Administration in Finland
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

4. 2. Background for the pilot
INSPIRE gives recommendations of the unique identifiers of spatial objects
INSPIRE Generic Conceptual Model
Guidelines for the encoding of spatial data
National centralized resolution service in Finland
URI’s for real-world phenomena /id/, spatial objects /so/, definitions /def/ and documentation /doc/
Data provider determine the local-id for so’s
Requests to URI’s -> data provider’s own URI service -> returns the documentation related, in requested format
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

5. 2. Background for the pilot - Statistics Finland’s INSPIRE services and data
View services (WMS) and download services (WFS) are available since May 2013 (
Annex III
Statistical Units:
Municipality-based statistical units
Grid net for statistics 1 km x 1 km
Population Distribution:
Population by municipality-based units
Population grid data 1 km x 1 km
Production and industrial facilities:
Production and industrial facilities
Utility and governmental services:
Educational institutions
Data is not yet harmonized to INSPIRE data schemas
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

6. 3. Aims of the pilot Technical Infrastructure aspect:
1. Build URI service in intranet an test how to use it for providing linked data
Based in technical description and examples provided in JHS 193 appendix 2.
Unique Identifiers aspect:
2. Test how to create pilot URI’s for INSPIRE- spatial objects, so
In JHS 193 is given recommendations about URI’s:
URI’s for INSPIRE-harmonized data:
RDF/linked data aspect:
3. Test how to create the RDF for spatial objects
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

7. 4. Results and notes Technical infrastructure has been created
Geoserver with sample data
Apache server for dereferencing
xslt-transformation file for creating Turtle upload sentence
RDF server Jena Fuseki, data uploaded there
Ways to create the unique identifiers was tested
Picking the local-id from the GML data to the URI path was tested
I also thought of rules for combining stat-id from the classifications to the local-id
Creating RDF for spatial objects has been tested
Defining some RDF links for the data was tested (hasFormat, seeAlso)
Onthology still needs to be created
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

8. 4. Results and notes
Technical issues: solvable, tests have been useful
Defining the URI’s: is bigger issue, but some useful tests were made here
In the pilot came clear the importance of onthology to create the RDF data
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

9. 5. Future plans regarding URI’s
Now focus should be in the definitions:
Defining the local ID’s of spatial objects
Creating the RDF of spatial objects (including different RDF links and onthology)
These will be done hopefully in an Eurostat Grant project:
URI’s for areal classifications and spatial objects
Creating common onthology to combine areal classifications and spatial objects
Providing data in RDF format and use it for production and visualization
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

10. Demo: Querying data in RDF/XML format
Querying all the data, returns also seeAlso link:
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

11. Demo: Querying data in RDF/XML format
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

12. Demo: Querying data in RDF/XML format
One municipality filtered: /doc/ /005
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

13. Demo: Querying data in gml format
/doc/ /005/EPSG:3067.gml2
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

14. Demo: Querying data in json format
/doc/ /005/EPSG:3067.json
30 May 2017
Tuuli Pihlajamaa

15. Thank you! Tuuli Pihlajamaa tuuli.pihlajamaa@stat.fi
Nordic Forum for Geography and Statistics / May 2017