Re: TGN place types (broader/narrower spanning ConceptSchemes)

On 30/03/14 11:15, Christophe Dupriez wrote:

> In this precise case, I would model whatever is needed using the most
> suitable vocabularies available if any.
> And I would add (automatically if possible) SKOS relations to guide the
> documentary retrieval engine.
> I.e. I would model without constraints something ontologically "rock
> solid" and then derive a "publishing" structure using SKOS.

+1 for this approach from me too.

This is what we are doing with the Finnish Spatio-Temporal Ontology SAPO 
[1]. The ontology itself is modelled using OWL, and has two main 
classes, time-bound places (similar in spirit to "Crimea after Russian 
annexation in 2014") and time-independent places (e.g. "Crimea", 
"Ukraine"). The relations between time-independent and time-dependent 
places are modelled separately - the current idea is to use the CHANGE 
vocabulary [2] to model the events (establishment, merge, split etc) 
that form the time series, but other representations for the 
representation including a simple part-of/includes property have been 
used in the past.

For publishing purposes, a SKOS representation is derived, simply by 
defining rdfs:subClassOf and rdfs:subPropertyOf relationships that map 
the classes and properties of the ontology to a simplified SKOS view. 
The conversion itself is implemented using the Skosify tool [3]. Of 
course, SPARQL construct queries could have been used here as well, 
though Skosify does some additional validation and enrichment on the 
conversion result.

-Osma

[1] http://www.seco.tkk.fi/ontologies/sapo/

[2] http://www.linkedearth.org/change/ns/

[3] http://code.google.com/p/skosify/

-- 
Osma Suominen
D.Sc. (Tech), Information Systems Specialist
National Library of Finland
P.O. Box 26 (Teollisuuskatu 23)
00014 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Tel. +358 50 3199529
osma.suominen@helsinki.fi
http://www.nationallibrary.fi

Received on Tuesday, 1 April 2014 06:07:32 UTC