Re: URIs for great circle arcs

Thanks for this implementation! If we implement such distance calculation in a search engine, and sort the
result according to distance, this would be local search (search within a special region). In this case the 
search vector has two dimensions (GPS coordinates). This is a special case of general similarity search
http://www.orthuber.com/wpa.htm
In general similarity search the search result is ordered according to a distance functions which can be 
defined by all http URI owners (using the convention shown in Figure 2 of
http://www.orthuber.com/wp1.pdf ).
It would be possible to search generally for objects which have similar quantitative (numeric) description. So 
the general application would be very attractive.

Wolfgang

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Toby A Inkster" <tai@g5n.co.uk>
To: "Linked Data community" <public-lod@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2009 10:45 AM
Subject: 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 Monday, 22 June 2009 12:48:38 UTC