Scaling/size of geographical entities

All,

long/lat coordinates are very useful to describe points but they don't 
tell us anything about the scale/size of the item.  For example, if we 
attach a coordinate to a city then this means something really different 
from a coordinate on a specific restaurant in that city.

The practical problem I am facing right now is that I am developing a 
map browser for our ontology editor, so that it can show Google maps for 
the selected object (assuming it has coordinates).  However, when the 
user navigates to a given resource, how can I determine a useful zooming 
of the map - here I would need something like dimension or area to get 
an idea of whether to show the whole city, a suburb, a block, or a 
street or backyard.  What about introducing an optional but recommended 
property for scale or size?  The onion stuff could help, but I don't see 
a standard property for this in the vocabulary.  Alternatively there 
could be an area class, but this may complicate querying and using the 
vocabulary.

I guess this may return the group to the discussion about the size of 
the new vocabulary, and where to set the boundary.  But my feeling is 
that some scaling information is critical for any form of visualization.

Thanks for any comment,
Holger

Received on Friday, 21 July 2006 17:17:26 UTC