Students and faculty at RPI have created more than 40 "mash-ups" of government data, taken from www.data.gov. They used Semantic Web technology to combine previously separate data sets from the website, resulting in--hopefully--new ways of understanding raw numbers. One of these mash-ups combines raw data on ozone and visibility with the previously separate geographical data of the reading sites. Users can sort through the ozone readings by land use, terrain, or the agency that collected it. Clicking on map points gives the full (downloadable) data set from that location.RPI has provided a video demo of how it works. Other mash-ups include Medicare Claims vs. Interstate Migration; Library Books per Capita, by State; and Wildfire vs. Government Budget. Some great reading!
RPI's site is also collaborative: users can comments on specific data points. They're hoping to make the mash-ups open-source. According to the press release, web specialist James Hendler is hoping to create an interface with which anyone can combine data sets from data.gov.