Re: Property "geographic identifier" in LOCN (was: Re: ISA Core Location Vocabulary)

Hi Kostis,

>> My opinion is that the vocabulary must contain a property like the proposed
>> "geographic identifier" to ensure interoperability with existing geospatial
>> tools/datasets. We have found this property to be of great importance,
>> as far as
>> interoperability and adoption of Linked Data technologies from domain
>> experts are

Yes, but then you need a reification instead of a role as you may have 
multiple geographic identifiers coming from multiple (authoritative) 
datasets. We are currently finishing our work on a gazetteer schema and 
are having similar thoughts and issues.

Cheers,
Krzysztof

On 01/03/2014 03:13 AM, Kostis Kyzirakos wrote:
> Hi,
> In the RDF world, every resource is identified by a URI.
>
> In the GIS world, a geographic feature is usually identified by a
> geographic identifier.
>
> In the US for example, "The Geographic Names Information System
> Identifier (GNIS ID)
> is a variable length, permanent, numeric identifier of up to ten digits
> in length that
> identifies each entity uniquely within the nation.  The GNIS is the new
> American National
> Standards Institute (ANSI) national standard code for several entity
> types.  Because each
> entity's GNIS ID is permanent, it will not change if the entity changes
> its name or if
> creation of a new entity changes the alphabetic sort. [...]" [1].
>
> My opinion is that the vocabulary must contain a property like the proposed
> "geographic identifier" to ensure interoperability with existing geospatial
> tools/datasets. We have found this property to be of great importance,
> as far as
> interoperability and adoption of Linked Data technologies from domain
> experts are
> concerned. In the past, we have developed a real-time wildfire
> monitoring service [2]
> for the National Observatory of Athens, where we used satellite data
> along with
> Linked Geospatial Data to produce fire maps. At any given point, we were
> able to
> export the result of a stSPARQL/GeoSPARQL query as an ESRI shape file (that
> included geographic identifiers), that allowed the domain experts to use
> the (enriched
> with Linked Geospatial Data) shape files with their existing (I would
> not call them
> legacy) tools/datasets/processing chains/infrastructure in general. This
> allowed them
> to load the shape files to ArcGIS for example, do a thematic join (based
> on the
> geographic identifier that was preserved) with auxiliary datasets that
> they are using
> in a daily basis and are not published as Linked Open Data and produce
> their final
> products.
>
> After reading the description of the geographic identifier property, I
> think that this is
> property is used as spatial version of owl:sameAs between identifiers
> defined by
> different authorities/publishers. In addition, a publisher can use this
> property to
> assert that a location has a specific identifier (e.g., a URN) which is
> very useful in
> practice in order to ensure interoperability with existing infrastructures.
>
> Best,
> Kostis
>
> [1] http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/gtc/gtc_gnisid.html
> [2] http://test.strabon.di.uoa.gr/
>
>
> ===================================================
> Kostis E. Kyzirakos, Ph.D.
> Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica
> DB Architectures (DA)
> Office L320
> Science Park 123
> 1098 XG Amsterdam  (NL)
> tel: +31 (20) 592-4039 <tel:%2B31%20%2820%29%20592-4039>
> mobile: +31 (0) 6422-95345 <tel:%2B31%20%280%29%206422-95345>
> e-mail: kostis@cwi.nl <mailto:kostis@cwi.nl>
> ===================================================
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 9:23 AM, Raphaël Troncy
> <raphael.troncy@eurecom.fr <mailto:raphael.troncy@eurecom.fr>> wrote:
>
>     Dear all,
>
>
>         Is it possible to give an RDF example of meaningful usage of
>         "geographic
>         identifier"? I think that could help  in understanding the issue.
>
>
>     I find myself with the same opinion than Frans. I don't yet
>     understand the purpose of this "geographic identifier" property,
>     although I understand the need for a vocab to have its own way to
>     describe its specific identifiers if there are some constraints on
>     how those identifiers should be interpreted. When this property was
>     introduced in the vocab? Is it a mapping with a specific field from
>     the INSPIRE schemas?
>     Best regards.
>
>        Raphaël
>
>     --
>     Raphaël Troncy
>     EURECOM, Campus SophiaTech
>     Multimedia Communications Department
>     450 route des Chappes, 06410 Biot, France.
>     e-mail: raphael.troncy@eurecom.fr <mailto:raphael.troncy@eurecom.fr>
>     & raphael.troncy@gmail.com <mailto:raphael.troncy@gmail.com>
>     Tel: +33 (0)4 - 9300 8242 <tel:%2B33%20%280%294%20-%209300%208242>
>     Fax: +33 (0)4 - 9000 8200 <tel:%2B33%20%280%294%20-%209000%208200>
>     Web: http://www.eurecom.fr/~troncy/
>
>


-- 
Krzysztof Janowicz

Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
5806 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060

Email: jano@geog.ucsb.edu
Webpage: http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net

Received on Friday, 3 January 2014 17:30:29 UTC