Re: Schema.org extension for spatial data

(how could I not un-lurk for this? :)

On 19 February 2016 at 14:23, Linda van den Brink
<l.vandenbrink@geonovum.nl> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Within the Geonovum testbed on spatial data on the web we have found that
> schema.org can help make spatial data discoverable on the web. While working
> with schema.org we noticed that most of the Things that are described with
> schema.org are modeled without a dedicated spatial focus in mind. For
> example the properties that describe "location" are spread over the schema,
> and the Things that can actually have a location are limited.

Yes, location-related show up all over schema.org. I think this
experience is not peculiar to the schema.org project -
spatial/geo/location concepts are almost as universal as temporal
aspects.

It is certainly true that those aspects of schema.org have not
benefited from dedicated professional attention of experts from the
geo-spatial domain. The terminology we have today, in part, was
inherited via the early inclusion of the rNews vocabulary into
schema.org (http://blog.schema.org/2011/09/extended-schemaorg-news-support.html).
rNews in turn had some geo concepts which I think came from
http://www.georss.org/ and perhaps originally from GML...  Along the
way a few bugs were introduced, some of which have been fixed within
schema.org. There also have been efforts (e.g. see last release
http://schema.org/docs/releases.html#v2.2 ) to adapt schema.org's
location vocabulary for more mobile services instead of assuming a
fixed place-of-work. Previously, for example, you could describe
various kinds of http://schema.org/LocalBusiness and their "bricks and
mortar" physical location, but if the same services (hairdressing,
electrician, locksmith etc.) were mobile, it was harder to describe
the areas they could serve.  We therefore added the notion that
http://schema.org/Service has a http://schema.org/areaServed property
that can be (amongst other things) a http://schema.org/GeoShape such
as http://schema.org/GeoCircle . This is still somewhat sketchy, but
allows for example a service to be described in terms of a circle's
metre radius from some postcode or address. Meanwhile there have also
been a few "internet of things"-meets-schema.org conversations,
touching on issues like description of rooms within a home or
workplace, and their inter-relations, zones/groups etc. We are likely
to add a basic notion of room anyway, motivated by  considerations
around hotel bookings (see draft proposal at
http://sdo-hotels.appspot.com/docs/hotels.html e.g.
sdo-hotels.appspot.com/Room or /HotelRoom ). This is another example
of the difficulty of separating spatial concerns from other schema
areas.

While schema.org's main use cases mean we'll never go as deep into the
spatial as e.g. GML, the project is certainly open to the idea of
improvements informed by efforts like this WG, the Geonovum testbed
etc.

> The folks (special thanks to Lieke Verhelst) in the testbed developed a
> proposed extension with the idea to start from scratch. Meaning: it does not
> propose modifications to the existing schema.org but rather seeks an
> alternative way to model geo information into schema.org keeping in mind the
> schema.org modeling objectives.

I'm not sure entirely how to understand "start from scratch", but if
the idea is roughly to think through how a schema.org could/should
handle these issues, rather than on bugfixes to our current (perhaps
idiosyncratic) approach, that seems a perfectly reasonable and very
useful exploration.

>     We refrain from modeling specific constructs
> that can be used to execute a spatial analysis

Can you give an example of something you have refrained from?

> since 1) there are vocabularies that better support this

(such as?)

> and 2) search engines currently do not seem to be equipped with spatial indexes.

I'm not sure how to interpret this, but most serious search engines
have a variety of map/geo/spatial-related associated features and
services. How those are implemented internally does not seem
especially relevant.

>
> We would be interested very much to get some comments on it from this group!

I'm not sure how much this W3C WG wants to discuss schema.org
specifics here in the WG versus in Github but this work looks really
interesting and I'll be nudging folk around schema.org to take a look
and comment...

Probably the most obvious comment but here goes: it would be great to
have a few concrete examples into the repo, particularly around
sgeo:coordinates WKT syntax which brings us close to the GeoJSON-LD
debates happening nearby. I would also love to get a feeling for
whether super-local use cases (e.g. modeling inside a building) are in
scope here. Would 'inside', 'next to', 'above' be enough to model a
home for any useful purposes? What usecases drive the level of detail
here?

cheers,

Dan


> See https://github.com/geo4web-testbed/geo-extension-to-schemaorg
>
>
> Linda

Received on Friday, 19 February 2016 14:03:13 UTC