Preamble

The NACA data shapes project is a project commissioned by the USDA to apply linked data principles to agricultural data. The project is a collobaration between the USDA and the University of Oviedo. The project is lead by Professor Jose Emilio Labra Gayo and the team consists of leading experts in the field of Linked data principles, data schemas and data integration. The team members are: Jose Emilio Labra Gayo, Josh Moore, Eric Prud’hommeaux, and Andra Waagmeester. Who represent the Weso team.

Context and content is provided by the USDA and their representives. The USDA team members are: Jennifer Woodward, Tom Baker, Chris Delhom and Derek Whitelock.

The book is an executable book that acts as an introduction to applying data shapes to the USDA data using NALT as the core concept space.

The remaining chapters in the preamble sets the stage by introducting the different concepts related to the application of the linked-data principles. The chapters are:

• A preamble on a waterfall model towards linked data

• A preamble into linked (open) data

• A preamble into Nalt and related concept spaces

Thes preambles are followed by an example linked data space. Here we introduce Wikidata, which is a public linked-data repository of the Wikimedia foundation, who also hosts the Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. This Wikimedia ecosystems has gained enough critical mass to serve as authoritative source for inspiration to build upon. In this chapter a few examples related to agriculture, applicable scientific literature and expert profiles are given.

The final chapter in this executable book is reporing on the first NACA data shape. Here we describe the modeling results of a first iteration of the NACA data shapes project. Here we collaborated with domain experts on cotton data and use cases. The results is a data model or boxology that can be used to structure cotton data into linked-data.