Example PhD

Ambient Data Linking

Supervisor: Professor A.D. Preece

Keywords: to follow...

Web technologies such as XML and RDF make it easier to integrate data from multiple sources by means of linking. Put simply, two data entities can be linked by a relation (for example, the entity "Cardiff University" is related to the entity "City of Cardiff" by a relation "is located in") allowing querying and visualisation of the linked data (e.g. placing Cardiff University on a map, or determining that Cardiff University is in the same city as the Millennium Stadium). Recent efforts are placing more and more linkable data in the public domain. Ambient computing is about devices that support people in carrying out everyday tasks using information on the network (including the Web). A key feature here is that an ambient computing device is "context aware", in terms of knowing who you are, where you are, and the kinds of things you are likely to do. So for example, in an unfamiliar city, your device could recommend places to go based on the kinds of things you normally like to do. This topic is about how ambient computing devices can work with linked data. Questions include: How can data sources be identified and linked together on-the-fly to support a particular task in a particular context, with minimal human intervention? How can issues such as the quality, value, and volume of information be managed in an ambient computing context? How can ambient services be made to operate effectively even when there is no locally-available Web (e.g. by devices operating as a peer-to-peer network)?

• dbpedia: linked data extracted from wikipedia
• data.gov.uk: the UK Government's public data initiative
• an introduction to ambient computing

Key Skills/Background: To follow...

Contact: Professor A.D. Preece to discuss this research topic.