Author: Tom Gruber
Title: Cobblies: Mashups of the Future
Date: March 9, 2007
Type: Invited presentation

Citation: Tom Gruber (2007). Cobblies: Mashups of the Future. Presentation to the European GeoInformatics Workshop, Edinburgh University, March 9, 2007. Slides available at http://tomgruber.org/writing/geosemantics.htm

File: geosemantics.ppt

Context: Workshop on the semantics of geospatial and geoscientific data, invited presentation to provide a perspective from experience with Web 2.0 applications and Semantic Web technologies.

Abstract: The geospatial data community faces huge challenges of data integration and automated reasoning with heterogenious data sets. They have embraced technologies such as ontologies and the Semantic web to help make explicit the assumptions underlying data from many sources, gathered at different times by different people, and used for different purposes. In this talk we offer a vision of how the community could deliver the fruits of their work as an incredible public resource -- a geospatial framework for web content -- that would integrate the best of available geospatial data, mapping visualizations, and public participation. What we call "cobblies" are applications composed of data and services that are more than just API calls - they use the power of explicitly specified, validated, structured data. The data of the geospatial community, such as government funded geological surveys or online gazetteers, would be the backbone of a whole new class of cobblies on the web.