Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web 41 (2016) 1–8 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/websem Exploratory spatio-temporal analysis of linked statistical data Vuk Mijović a , Valentina Janev b,* , Dejan Paunović b , Sanja Vraneš b a School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Institute Mihajlo Pupin, Belgrade, Serbia b University of Belgrade, Institute Mihajlo Pupin, Belgrade, Serbia article info Article history: Received 11 April 2016 Received in revised form 11 August 2016 Accepted 24 October 2016 Available online 1 November 2016 Keywords: Linked data Statistics Spatio-temporal Exploration Visualization Interoperability abstract Publishing and sharing open government data in Linked Data format provides many opportunities in terms of data aggregation/integration and creation of information mashups. Statistical data, that contains various performance indicators and their evolution through time, is an example of data that can be used as the foundation for policy prediction, planning and adjustments, and can be re-used in different applications. However, due to Linked Data being relatively a new field, currently there is a lack of tools that enable efficient exploration and analysis of linked geospatial statistical datasets. Therefore, ESTA-LD (Exploratory Spatio-Temporal Analysis) tool was developed to address some of the Linked statistical Data management issues, such as crossing the statistical and the geographical dimensions, producing statistical maps, visualizing different measures, and comparing statistical indicators of different regions through time. This paper discusses the modeling approach that was adopted so that the published data conform to the established standards for representing statistical, spatial and temporal data in Linked Data format. The main contribution is related to the delivery of state-of-the-art open-source tools for retrieving, quality assessment, exploration and analysis of statistical Linked Data that is made available through a SPARQL endpoint. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Statistical data is often used as the foundation for policy prediction, planning and adjustments, and therefore has a significant impact on the society (from citizens to businesses to governments). In the last few years, with the rise of the open data movement, a large and increasing number of governments and organizations have started to make information freely available and easily accessible online. In order to increase transparency, the information is also published as Linked Open Data [1]. From the government systems perspective, the Linked Data approach can be observed as a technique for making the data interoperable and ready for consumption. In order to harmonize approaches used for describing the datasets, semantic services or repositories, the European Commission, in collaboration with the W3C consortium, has accepted a set of standard vocabularies that should be used to build public administration services [2]. In the ISA programme framework, the European Commission supports * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Vuk.Mijovic@pupin.rs (V. Mijović), Valentina.Janev@pupin.rs (V. Janev), Dejan.Paunovic@pupin.rs (D. Paunović), Sanja.Vranes@pupin.rs (S. Vraneš). the development of tools, services and frameworks in the area of e- Government through more than 40 actions. 1 Currently, the JOINUP repository is used for storing the descriptions of schemata used in the publicly available datasets, as well as services that enable access/retrieval of data. In general, the wider adoption of standards for representing and querying semantic information, such as RDF(s) and SPARQL, along with increased functionalities and improved robustness of mod- ern RDF stores, have established Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies in the areas of data and knowledge management. However, these technologies are still quite novel, and a lot of the tooling and standards are either missing, still in development, or not yet widely accepted. For example, the GeoSPARQL [3] standard that supports representing and querying geospatial data on the Se- mantic Web was published in June 2012, but the Spatial Data on the Web Working Group is still working on clarifying and formal- izing the relevant standards landscape with respect to integrating spatial information with other data on the Web, discovering of dif- ferent facts related to places, and identifying and assessing existing methods and tools in order to create a set of best practices. The RDF 1 http://ec.europa.eu/isa/ready-to-use-solutions/index_en.htm. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2016.10.002 1570-8268/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.