The GeoTOD-II project developed a customisable, open-source framework to support linked data interfaces to relational, web service and linked location data resources. The linked data interfaces implement UK Government guidelines on URIs for location data. GeoTOD-II was developed by STFC e-Science under funding by OMII-UK and the Software Sustainability Institute provided consultancy on their use of the OGSA-DAI data management framework.

Two presentations on GeoTOD-II have been given at major UK and international conferences - the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2011 (AHM) and the International Semantic Web Conference 2011 (IWSC).

The AHM has been the national forum for UK e-Science development and research e-infrastructure for the last decade. At this year's conference, held from 26-29th September in York, GeoTOD-II's Arif Shaon of STFC presented GeoTOD-II as part of the best papers session. The talk prompted technical questions on whether the framework uses data caching and does its own data integration and also whether GeoTOD-II had engaged with the UK Environment Agency (GeoTOD-II had consulted with the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and provided feedback to the Ordnance Survey). GeoTOD-II won 2nd prize for best paper at AHM!

ISWC is the major international Semantic Web and linked data conference, dealing with research into Semantic Web and linked data access, integration, inferencing and reasoning. ISWC was held from 23-27th October in Bonn. The institute's Mike Jackson presented GeoTOD-II on behalf of the project as part of the Terra Cognita workshop on linked data and geospatial data. Technical questions on the GeoTOD-II framework focused on the overhead of converting legacy data on-demand per-request and the possibility of applying geo-spatial extensions to its linked data stores and relational databases. A related question arose relating to the UK Cabinet Office recommendations on URIs for location and whether these imply a centralisation that goes against the spirit of linked data. The presentation also prompted discussion on the UK's open data strategy.

The GeoTOD-II framework is available on SourceForge and a demonstration server is available. The framework is currently being used within the JISC-funded ACRID (Advanced Climate Research Infrastructure for Data) project.

For further information, please contact GeoTOD-II.