Talking Open Data

Enticing users into exploring Open Data remains an important challenge for the whole Open Data paradigm. Standard stock interfaces often used by Open Data portals are anything but inspiring even for tech-savvy users, let alone those without an articulated interest in data science. To address a broader range of citizens, we designed an open data search interface supporting natural language interactions via popular platforms like Facebook and Skype. Our data-aware chatbot answers search requests and suggests relevant open datasets, bringing fun factor and a potential of viral dissemination into Open Data exploration. The current system prototype is available for Facebook (https://m.me/OpenDataAssistant) and Skype (https://join.skype.com/bot/6db830ca-b365-44c4-9f4d-d423f728e741) users.Comment: Accepted at ESWC2017 demo trac

How dangerous is your life? Personalising Government open crime data

This paper discusses the use of Government Open Data and how public services based on this data can and should encourage data personalisation. We present our case study Fearsquare, an application that allows people to interact with public UK crime statistics in a way that is specific to their own, individual, everyday life by leveraging the popular social media service FourSquare. This service is used as an example of how Open Data can be tailored for used in the field of personal informatics. Results suggest that the ability to personalise Government Open Crime Data using Foursquare user location history data provides an added value to an already publically available dataset

Tentative Appraisal of Compatibility of Small-Scale CMB Anisotropy Detections in the Context of COBE-DMR-Normalized Open and Flat Λ\Lambda CDM Cosmogonies

Goodness-of-fit statistics are used to quantitatively establish the compatibility of CMB anisotropy predictions in a wide range of DMR-normalized, open and spatially-flat $\Lambda$, CDM cosmogonies with the set of all presently available small-scale CMB anisotropy detection data. Conclusions regarding model viability depend sensitively on the prescription used to account for the 1$\sigma$ uncertainty in the assumed value of the DMR normalization, except for low-density, $\Omega_0 \sim 0.3$ -- 0.4, open models which are compatible with the data for all prescriptions used. While large baryon-density (\Omega_B \gap 0.0175 h^{-2}), old (t_0 \gap 15 -- 16 Gyr), low-density ($\Omega_0 \sim 0.2$ -- 0.4), flat-$\Lambda$ models might be incompatible, no model is incompatible with the data for all prescriptions. In fact, some open models seem to fit the data better than should be expected, and this might be an indication that some error bars are mildly overconservative.Comment: 15 page PostScript file, including 6 included figures. Also available via anonymous ftp from ftp://astro.caltech.edu/users/kmg/chi.p

Advanced Visualizations Tools for CERN Institutional Data

Project Specification: The aim of this openlab summer student project is to provide intuitive and powerful visualisation tools for key institutional data about CERN, including budgets and contracts. The project will be done in collaboration with the Open Knowledge Foundation under the framework of CERN's open data policy regarding scientific results from LHC. The student will use the model-view-controller web development framework with Flask/HTML5/jQuery/TwitterBootstrap technologies for the user interface and SQLAlchemy ORM for database persistence. Abstract: CERN’s Open Access Policy says that “all results of its experimental and theoretical work shall be published or otherwise made generally available”. Following that, CERN has reached a collaboration agreement with the Open Knowledge Foundation in order for CERN to publish and visualize institutional data. As part of this collaboration, we will develop a module for showing this data in a graphical way in the CERN side and a tool in the Open Knowledge Foundation site for automatizing the input of data