Environmental metrics play a significant role in behavioural change, policy formation, education, and industrial decision-making. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful framework for providing information on environmental impacts, but LCA data is under-utilized, difficult to access, and difficult to understand. Some of the issues that are required to be resolved to increase relevancy and use of LCA are accessibility, validation, reporting and publication, and transparency. This thesis proposes that many of these issues can be resolved through the application of open frameworks for LCA software and data. The open source software (OSS), open data, open access, and semantic web movements advocate the transparent development of software and data, inviting all interested parties to contribute. A survey was presented to the LCA community to gauge the community’s interest and receptivity to working within open frameworks, as well as their existing concerns with LCA data. Responses indicated dissatisfaction with existing tools and some interest in open frameworks, though interest in contributing was weak. The responses also pointed out transparency, the expansion of LCA information, and feedback to be desirable areas for improvement. Software for providing online LCA databases was developed according to open source, open data, and linked data principles and practices. The produced software incorporates features that attempt to resolve issues identified in previous literature in addition to needs defined from the survey responses. The developed software offers improvements over other databases in areas of transparency, data structure flexibility, and ability to facilitate user feedback. The software was implemented as a proof of concept, as a test-bed for attracting data contributions from LCA practitioners, and as a tool for interested users. The implementation allows users to add LCA data, to search through LCA data, and to use data from the software in separate independent tools.. The research contributes to the LCA field by addressing barriers to improving LCA data and access, and providing a platform on which LCA database tools and data can develop efficiently, collectively, and iteratively.

Environmental metrics play a significant role in behavioural change, policy formation, education, and industrial decision-making. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful framework for providing information on environmental impacts, but LCA data is under-utilized, difficult to access, and difficult to understand. Some of the issues that are required to be resolved to increase relevancy and use of LCA are accessibility, validation, reporting and publication, and transparency. This thesis proposes that many of these issues can be resolved through the application of open frameworks for LCA software and data. The open source software (OSS), open data, open access, and semantic web movements advocate the transparent development of software and data, inviting all interested parties to contribute. A survey was presented to the LCA community to gauge the community’s interest and receptivity to working within open frameworks, as well as their existing concerns with LCA data. Responses indicated dissatisfaction with existing tools and some interest in open frameworks, though interest in contributing was weak. The responses also pointed out transparency, the expansion of LCA information, and feedback to be desirable areas for improvement. Software for providing online LCA databases was developed according to open source, open data, and linked data principles and practices. The produced software incorporates features that attempt to resolve issues identified in previous literature in addition to needs defined from the survey responses. The developed software offers improvements over other databases in areas of transparency, data structure flexibility, and ability to facilitate user feedback. The software was implemented as a proof of concept, as a test-bed for attracting data contributions from LCA practitioners, and as a tool for interested users. The implementation allows users to add LCA data, to search through LCA data, and to use data from the software in separate independent tools.. The research contributes to the LCA field by addressing barriers to improving LCA data and access, and providing a platform on which LCA database tools and data can develop efficiently, collectively, and iteratively.

In the last years, the number of freely available Linked and Open Data datasets has multiplied into tens of thousands. The numbers of applications taking advantage of it, however, have not. Thus, large portions of potentially valuable data remain unexploited and are inaccessible for lay users. Therefore the upfront investment in releasing data in the first place is hard to justify. The lack of applications needs to be addressed in order not to undermine efforts put into Linked and Open Data. In existing research, strong indicators can be found that the dearth of applications is due to a lack of pragmatic, working architectures supporting these applications and guiding developers. In this thesis, a new architecture for the integration and application of Linked and Open Data is presented. Fundamental design decisions are backed up by two studies: firstly, based on real-world Linked and Open Data samples, characteristic properties are identified. A key finding is the fact that large amounts of structured data display tabular structures, do not use clear licensing and involve multiple different file formats. Secondly, following on from that study, a comparison of storage choices in relevant query scenarios is made. It includes the de-facto standard storage choice in this domain, Triples Stores, as well as relational and NoSQL approaches. Results show significant performance deficiencies of some technologies in certain scenarios. Consequently, when integrating Linked and Open Data in scenarios with application-specific entities, the first choice of storage is relational databases. Combining these findings and related best practices of existing research, a prototype framework is implemented using Java 8 and Hibernate. As a proof-of-concept it is employed in an existing Linked and Open Data integration project. Thereby, it is shown that a best practice architectural component is introduced successfully, while development effort to implement specific program code can be simplified. Thus, the present work provides an important foundation for the development of semantic applications based on Linked and Open Data and potentially leads to a broader adoption of such applications.

abstract: In this dissertation, I study large-scale civic conversations where technology extends the range of “discourse visibility” beyond what human eyes and ears can meaningfully process without technical assistance. Analyzing government documents on digital innovation in government, emerging data activism practices, and large-scale civic conversations on social media, I advance a rhetoric for productively listening to democratic discourse as it is practiced in 2016. I propose practical strategies for how various governments—from the local to the United Nations international climate talks—might appropriately use technical interventions to assist civic dialogues and make civic decisions. Acknowledging that we must not lose the value that comes from face-to-face civic deliberation, I suggest practical pathways for how and when to use technology to increase democratic engagement from all stakeholders. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2016

Open data is information readable by machines that are freely available to others and it is further the defining element of a smart city. However, little research has been conducted within the area of open data within the smart city context. Further, the smart city initiative explored is the second to be established in Sweden, and an open data platform will serve as the cornerstone in the smart city initiative. In addition to that, the collaboration between the stakeholders is a key factor for reaching the common goal when creating a smart city. In this case study, the researchers have conducted an exploratory case study in order to examine how stakeholders can collaborate within a smart city initiative to foster innovation through the use of open data. Therefore, key stakeholders within the project have been interviewed and the concept of digital innovation network has been adopted to get a deeper understanding of the project, as it involves institutions and companies from both public and private sector that aims to be innovative together. Further, this study identifies four key concerns to guide the smart city initiative. There is a need for a clear strategy and committed management when opening up and handling data; to involve public opinion in data collection, analysis and application to make the open data platform function; to bridge the knowledge resources between the stakeholders in order to benefit from the collaboration in the project; and make a distinction in how to share data between the two discovered innovation networks.

Det huvudsakliga syftet med denna studie är att öka förutsättningarna för Örebro kommun att bedriva ett framgångsrikt arbete med öppna data. Genom att analysera nuläget med avseende på öppna data, dels nationellt, dels inom kommunen, ämnar studien att presentera ett antal rekommenderade strategiska åtgärder som bedöms vara lämpliga för att förbättra arbetet med öppna data i Örebro kommun. Rapporten ska, förutom att fylla ett utbildande syfte internt, utgöra ett underlag för framtida beslut angående öppna data centralt inom kommunen och i kommunens förvaltningar. Två workshopar och intervjuer med interna och externa aktörer genomfördes för att identifiera utmaningar, potentiella målbilder och aktiviteter relaterade till öppna data inom Örebro kommun. Dessa analyserades utifrån tidigare forskning om öppna data i offentliga organisationer. Resultaten visar att kommunen i Örebro bör öka den organisatoriska förmågan, skapa engagemang hos medborgare och underhålla en mer målorienterad strategi för öppna data. / The release of public sector information as open data is expected to bring various benefits such as citizen participation, transparency and innovation. In recent years’ open government data has been getting more attention at various levels of government causing several frameworks and manuals to be published. These publications aim to help local governments by providing guidance on how open data efforts should be organized and implemented in practice and a common to these reports is that they contain general descriptions and guidelines that are addressed to all public organizations working with open data. This demands that the proposed practices must be customized when adapted by a specific organization. The municipality of Örebro has an ongoing commitment to open data. Since the interest in open data started to take off in Sweden, the municipality has periodically released new open data sets and on three occasions conducted hackathons with an open data theme. However, the recent introduction of a new municipal management, as well as the loss of an open data key figure, has impeded the continued work with open data in Örebro. Therefore, there is reason to examine what measures should be taken to improve the efforts of open data release in the municipality. In this study interviews and workshops were conducted to identify barriers, goals and activities related to open data in order to bring forward empirically supported recommendations that help the organization to overcome barriers and work towards a more streamlined open data process. The results suggest that the municipality in Örebro should make efforts to increase organizational capabilities, nurture citizen engagement and support a more goal-oriented strategy for open data.

To guarantee the well-functioning of modern societies, it is essential to ensure thatcitizens are aware of their environment as well as the government's actions andperformance. Therefor citizens need to have access to data collected by publicbodies from the activities within their society. However, these data may not easilyand instantly be perceivable by people. To release the potential of these data,which lead to improving the lives of citizen, the data need to analyzed, enhancedand eventually visualized, so the outcome would be usable to all regardless theirage and education. In this project, we propose, design, implement, and evaluate aninteractive analytical visualization framework for open-data. To achieve our purpose,the recent open data-sets from Sundsvall Municipality has been used as bothour case-study and demonstration sample. The solution has been design and builtbased on a set of requirements and principles we suggested for an ideal solution.The offered solution in this project enables users to analyze data by interactingwith the visualization graphics. The solution let the user extract information andfacts from large data-sets, and correlate different property of data by applying filtersand categorizing data, and see the result instantly. Standard web technologieswere used to implement the solution, namely HTML5, JavaScript, and SVGgraphics, which made the system to be cross-platform and high-performing. Tohandle the big-data, we enhance the data-set before-hand by performing aggregateoperations using Map-Reduce and parallel computing algorithms (i.e. Java-8 parallelstreams), and the further computation is implemented in JavaScript, and processedat the client-side.

Les études écologiques sont maintenant considérées comme prometteuses en raison de leur capacité à intégrer dans un même modèle autant des facteurs individuels que populationnels. Le mouvement récent de l’open data pourrait jouer un rôle important dans la pérennisation des démarches multidisciplinaires. Cette thèse montre que l’association des méthodes écologiques aux données publiques permet d’éclairer sous un angle nouveau des problématiques des maladies infectieuses.En Guyane Française, des méthodes écologiques dites de séries temporelles couplées aux données climatiques libres ont contribué à une meilleure compréhension du rôle du climat sur la dynamique de la transmission du paludisme, de la leishmaniose cutanée ainsi que de l’histoplasmose disséminée. L’utilisation de méthodes écologiques sur des données libres de la littérature scientifique concernant la séroprévalence toxoplasmose dans les populations humaines a permis d’identifier les principaux facteurs influençant le niveau de séroprévalence globale et indirectement du risque de toxoplasmose congénital associé. L’association de données onusiennes à des méthodes écologiques a permis de montrer qu’une prévalence importante d’ascaridiose est associée à une réduction par 10 de l’incidence du paludisme et l’impact significatif de la corruption sur la mortalité juvéno-infantile et sur les résistances aux anti-tuberculeux. Ces études montrent que l’association des méthodes écologiques aux données publiques permet d’éclairer sous un angle nouveau des problématiques des maladies infectieuses. Ce type d‘étude fournit la flexibilité nécessaire à l’étude des interactions complexes des nombreux déterminants de la santé. / Ecological studies are now considered promising because of their ability to integrate as well as individual factors than populational ones in the same model. The recent open data movement could play an important role in the sustainability of multidisciplinary approaches. The studies developed in this thesis show that the combination of ecological methods with open data could give original results in the issues of infectious diseases.In French Guiana, ecological methods called time series, coupled with open climate data, have contributed to a better understanding of the role of climate on the dynamics of malaria, cutaneous leishmaniasis and disseminated histoplasmosis. The use of ecological methods with open data from the scientific literature concerning toxoplasmosis seroprevalence in human populations has permitted to identify the main factors influencing the level of overall seroprevalence and indirectly to estimate the associated risk of congenital toxoplasmosis.The combination of UN data to ecological methods has shown that a high prevalence of ascariasis is associated with a reduction from 10 in the incidence of malaria and that corruption has a significant impact on child mortality and resistance to TB.The various studies developed in this thesis show that the combination of ecological methods to public data sheds a new light on the issues of infectious diseases. This type of study provides the flexibility to study the complex interactions of many determinants of health.

This thesis discusses the opportunities of using open data particularly from the perspective of commercial organizations. At first, the concept of open data is generally described including the relationships with related concepts. The thesis also mentions the general benefits and estimated economic impact of using open data. Next, it is described the current situation of open data activities in the Czech republic, the current possible sources of open data and also the possible business models for open data. The practical benefits of this thesis include the visualized outputs from the content analysis of national open data catalogues data.gov.uk and govdata.de, which demonstrate what kind of published datasets are available in those catalogues as an example for the Czech republic and also the conclusions of the performed pre-survey on demand for open data in the Czech republic. Based on this and similar surveys around the world, it was found that there is a big interest on open data from the commercial organizations and the biggest issue is its insufficient availability.

Nowadays, there is a tendency to publish data on the Web, due to the benefits it brings to the society and the new legislation that encourage the opening of data. These collections of open data, also known as datasets, are typically published in open data portals by governments and institutions around the world in order to make it open -- available on the Web in a free and reusable manner. The common behaviour tends to be that publishers expose their data as individual tabular datasets. Open data is considered highly valuable because promoting the use of public information produces transparency, innovation and other social, political and economic benefits. Especially, this importance is also considerable in situational scenarios, where a small group of consumers (developers or data scientists) with specific needs require thematic data for a short life cycle. In order that these data consumers easily assess whether the data is adequate for their purpose there are different mechanisms. For example, SPARQL endpoints have become very useful for the consumption of open data, and particularly, Linked Open Data (LOD). Moreover, in order to access open data in a straightforward manner, Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are also highly recommended feature of open data portals. However, accessing this open data is a difficult task since current Open Data platforms do not generally provide suitable strategies to access their data. On the one hand, accessing open data through SPARQL endpoints is a difficult task because it requires knowledge in different technologies, which is challenging especially for novice developers. Moreover, LOD is not usually available since most used formats in open data government portals are tabular. On the other hand, although providing Web APIs would facilitate developers to easily access open data for reusing it from open data portals’ catalogs, there is a lack of suitable Web APIs in open data portals. Moreover, in most cases, the currently available APIs only allow to access catalog’s metadata or to download entire data resources (i.e. coarse-grain access to data), hampering the reuse of data. In addition, as the open data is commonly published individually without considering potential relationships with other datasets, reusing several open datasets together is not a trivial task, thus requiring mechanisms that allow data consumers to integrate and access tabular open data published on the Web. Therefore, open data is not being used to its full potential because it is not easily accessible. As the access to open data is thus still limited for end-users, particularly those without programming skills, we propose a model-based approach to automatically generate Web APIs from open data. This APIfication approach takes into account the access to multiple integrated tabular datasets and the consumption of data in situational scenarios. Firstly, we focus on data that can be integrated by means of join and union operations. Then, we coin the term disposable Web APIs as an alternative mechanism for the consumption of open data in situational scenarios. These disposable Web APIs are created on-the-fly to be used temporarily by a user to consume specific open data. Accordingly, the main objective is to provide suitable mechanisms to easily access and reuse open data on the fly and in an integrated manner, solving the problem of difficult access through SPARQL endpoints for most data consumers and the lack of suitable Web APIs with easy access to open data. With this approach, we address both open data publishers and consumers, as long as the publishers will be able to include a Web API within their data, and data consumers or reusers will be benefited in those cases that a Web API pointing to the open data is missing. The results of the experiments conducted led us to conclude that users consider our generated Web APIs as easy to use, providing the desired open data, even though coming from different datasets and especially in situational scenarios. / Esta tesis ha sido financiada por la Universidad de Alicante mediante un contrato destinado a la formación predoctoral, y por la Generalitat Valenciana mediante una subvención para la contratación de personal investigador de carácter predoctoral (ACIF2019).