Re: Species Concept Mapping RDF fixes and question, should the species be represented as a class? Class SpeciesConcept => Class Species Cougar

>
> If by reasoning you mean formal logic, and if you want to stay in OWL
> DL or some other computationally tractable RDF based language,  I am
> inclined to guess that you will be forced to make this conclusion
> somewhat tautogical. In general you won't be able to use a single
> predicate, e.g. isObservedIn to act on both instances and classes
> because the subject of a triple is always an instance of something,
> and OWL DL prohibits anything from being both an instance and a class.
>  So you are likely to end up with an axiom---a definition if you will
>
> C isSpeciesObservedIn W =(def)  thereExists o an instance of C AND o
> isIndividualObservedIn W
>
> Unless I am wrong about about OWL2 Metamodeling as in my response to
> Pat, I suspect you will be forced to the above kind of solution
>


Hi Bob et al., I might be wrong about this but I think I have a pattern that
allows a species to used as both a class and and instance
in the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base. I am not opposed to the idea of modeling
species as instances, I am just trying to determine the best way
to handle these different use cases, and that allows these different
representations to be linked and at least "know" about each other.

Here is an example RDF for an observation:

http://lod.geospecies.org/observations/a3c39dad-6756-4129-9a61-fbd32883d369.rdf

* I am still working on the format of these observations, I would like to
get them to work under TDWG eventually.

Each of the observation records makes statements about a species that links
it to a county.

 <geospecies:SpeciesConcept rdf:about="http://lod.geospecies.org/ses/kQmp4">
    <!-- Distribution Info -->
    <geospecies:isExpectedIn rdf:resource="
http://lod.geospecies.org/locations/1bdde98c-2d38-4d20-8da0-19f1f187f31e"/>
    <geospecies:wasObservedIn rdf:resource="
http://lod.geospecies.org/locations/1bdde98c-2d38-4d20-8da0-19f1f187f31e"/>
    <geospecies:isExpectedIn rdf:resource="http://sws.geonames.org/5279468/
"/>
    <geospecies:wasObservedIn rdf:resource="http://sws.geonames.org/5279468/
"/>
    <geospecies:isExpectedIn rdf:resource="http://sws.geonames.org/5250768/
"/>
    <geospecies:wasObservedIn rdf:resource="http://sws.geonames.org/5250768/
"/>
</geospecies:SpeciesConcept>

And a statment about the County that links it to the species.

Since each observed species is also expected I make both assertions.
I used "expected" in those cases where a species might be expected in a
county even though their are no specific observation records in the
Knowledge Base that ties it to a particular county.

<!-- County Info -->
  <geospecies:County rdf:about="http://sws.geonames.org/5250768/">
    <geospecies:hasExpectationOf rdf:resource="
http://lod.geospecies.org/ses/kQmp4"/>
    <geospecies:hasObservationOf rdf:resource="
http://lod.geospecies.org/ses/kQmp4"/>
    <rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://sws.geonames.org/5250768/"/>
  </geospecies:County>

This seems to work on the live LOD, as demonstrated by on my example SPARQL
page.

http://about.geospecies.org/sparql.xhtml

Theoretically you could use this pattern to include expectation and
observation in much smaller geographical areas than a county.
I just do this at the county level since a large number of historical
records are recorded to the county level.

I could also create a geonames record for each collection location but I
have decided not to do that for now.

 * Note: In the LOD space I try to make this work in a way that does not
require users to load the ontology, because it seems that a number of these
ontologies do not work well together.

 * Right now the GeoSpecies Ontology should mainly be used as a reference to
the meaning of specific terms rather than as a fully implemented and
accurate ontology. In that regard the ontology is flawed and unstable.

 * In the end it would be best to have it work TDWG ontology (at least for
observations) which is still being discussed.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
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