Re: Scaling/size of geographical entities

I would suggest, if you haven't already, to have a look at  
www.georss.org, which we intend to use as the source of the geo  
update. There are two attributes defined in this model which could be  
useful for communicating scale. The first is the featuretypetag,  
since feature types such as cities may carry an implicit scale with  
them. The other is the radius attribute, which can define a radius of  
interest about a point or other geometry. One could go even farther  
and define an explicit semantic for point with radius (e.g. <is- 
located-at+aoi> ) using the relationshiptag attribute.

You also point out an area for future geospatial ontology development  
activity, that of context or viewpoint. For now, however, it should  
be practical to start small.

Cheers,

Josh

On Jul 20, 2006, at 5:19 PM, Holger Knublauch wrote:

>
> 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 17:57:42 UTC