Re: How can I express containment/composition?

Barry and Matteo, thank you for pointing me to the GeoNames Ontology. 
Geographical containment can also be found in GeoSPARQL 
(http://schemas.opengis.net/geosparql/1.0/geosparql_vocab_all.rdf): 
sfContains.

I had the feeling that what I primarily needed was the logical concept 
of containment/composition, because that would allow reasoning on the 
part of the data consumer. But I guess it would be best to specify both 
logical AND geographical containment. As far as I can tell, the 
geographical containment in GeoSPARQL and GeoNames does not imply 
logical containment. But perhaps I am overestimating the power of 
dcterms:hasPart?

I was thinking about an example. Let's say the following is known:

1) A country consists of provinces
2) For each country, the complete set of provinces is available
3) For each province the number of inhabitants is available

Could a machine answer the question "Which country has the highest 
number of inhabitants?" without help from a human?

Regards,
Frans



On 21-2-2013 14:10, Matteo Casu wrote:
> You could also check the GeoNames ontology, which considers administrative subdivisions: http://www.geonames.org/ontology/documentation.html
> E.G.: in the USA, level 1 administrative subdivisions are States. In Italy, they are Regions.
>
> It is a minor change of perspective with respect to yours.
>
>
> Il giorno 21/feb/2013, alle ore 14:01, Frans Knibbe | Geodan <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl> ha scritto:
>
>> Thank you Martynas, that seems to be just what I was looking for!
>>
>> Frans
>>
>> On 21-2-2013 13:54, Martynas Jusevičius wrote:
>>> Hey Frans,
>>>
>>> Dublin Core Terms has some general properties for this:
>>> dct:hasPart http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-hasPart
>>> dct:isPartOf http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-isPartOf
>>>
>>> Martynas
>>> graphity.org
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Frans Knibbe | Geodan
>>> <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I would like to express a composition relationship. Something like:
>>>> A Country consist of Provinces
>>>> A Province consists of Municipalities
>>>>
>>>> I thought this should be straightforward because this is a common and
>>>> logical kind of relationship, but I could not find a vocabulary which allows
>>>> be to make this kind of statement. Perhaps I am bad at searching, or maybe I
>>>> did not use the right words.
>>>>
>>>> I did find this document:
>>>> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/OEP/SimplePartWhole/ ("Simple
>>>> part-whole relations in OWL Ontologies"). It explains that OWL has no direct
>>>> support for this kind of relationship and it goes on to give examples on how
>>>> one can create ontologies that do support the relationship in one way or the
>>>> other.
>>>>
>>>> Is there a ready to use ontology/vocabulary out there that can help me
>>>> express containment/composition?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks in advance,
>>>> Frans
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 21 February 2013 14:11:30 UTC