URIs for great circle arcs

Great circle arcs are the shortest surface paths between two points  
on a spherical body. I've minted some URIs (and am serving up RDF/ 
XML) for great circle arcs on the surface of the Earth. Amongst other  
things, the RDF/XML returned will tell you the distance between the  
points, the compass bearing and the midpoint.

For example, the arc between London and Tokyo is represented as:

<http://ontologi.es/place/arc/51.507778;-0.128056/35.683333;139.766667>

which is a geo:SpatialThing. There is also:

<http://ontologi.es/place/arc/ 
51.507778;-0.128056/35.683333;139.766667#points>

which is an rdfs:Container representing the (infinite) set of all  
points between the two endpoints of the line.

An additional feature is the ability to link to URIs representing the  
endpoints. e.g.:

<http://ontologi.es/place/arc/ 
51.507778;-0.128056/35.683333;139.766667?uri1=http://dbpedia.org/ 
resource/London&uri2=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tokyo>

The document you get returned still has a primaryTopic of

<http://ontologi.es/place/arc/51.507778;-0.128056/35.683333;139.766667>

(i.e. it doesn't alter the linked data URI) but now contains explicit  
dbpedia references for the end points. Those URIs don't have to be  
from dbpedia - they could be anything - they're not used in  
calculations of distances, etc - just included in the output.

Possible uses: flight and travel linked data.

Any ideas for improvements?

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>

Received on Sunday, 21 June 2009 09:45:33 UTC