Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Downscaling teh Semantic Web: Co-located with the International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S)

Data sharing usually focuses on centralized and very powerful solutions centred around Web hosted servers and (mobile) clients accessing it. As a direct consequence, the usage of WorldWide Web (WWW) and Semantic Web technologies depends on the availability of a Web infrastructure compassing data-centres, high speed reliable Internet connection and modern client devices. The digital divide that is currently widely recognized separates the world into those who have access to Web-based platforms and those who don’t. Whilst Linked Data has been designed primarily for using the Web as a platform we should keep everyone in mind when we design platforms and aim at helping to reduce this digital divide. This workshop aimed
at achieving this goal through working on three aspects (Infrastructure, Interfaces and
Relevancy) around (Linked) Open Data. Downscale2016 followed the success of previous Downscale workshops DownScale2012 and DownScale2013 and Downscale2014. In this installment of the workshop, we mostly focused on
appropriate infrastructures. Instead of using large­scale centralised approaches to data
management we look at breaking data­centric architectures into smaller components
that consume less electricity, be cheaper to own, and more flexible than a “big server” while still mimicking, as a swarm, the features one such big server would provide. As
such, the workshopmatches ICT for Development (ICT4D) goals with ICT for Solutions
(ICT4S) and the goal of the workshop was to promote the dialogue between ICT4S,
Semantic Web and ICT4D researchersand practitioners will further each of the research fields.