FOAF, geonames, and more

Hi all,

I'm currently looking for ways to link things (especially foaf:Agents)
to geonames [1] defined entities (since it provides not only lat/long
info but also useful things as wikipedia entry, neighbour places ...).

Currently, there's a foaf:based_near property, which links two
geo84:SpatialThing(s)
Since geo:Feature (which is used to define all geonames.org ontology
instances) and foaf:Person are subclasses of SpatialThing, we can link
any foaf:Person to a geonames.org "Feature" as:

http://apassant.net/foaf.rdf#me foaf:based_near http://sws.geonames.org/2975249/

Yet, foaf:Agent itself is not a subclass of geo84:SpatialThing
So, I cannot say that a foaf:Organisation is located in a city.

One solution could be to subclass not only foaf:Person from
geo84:SpatialThing, but foaf:Agent itself.

The other idea would be to create a new property as locatedIn (in
geonames or in geo84 ontology, or even new namespace) that will link
any owl:Thing / rdf:Resource (and not only subclasses of SpatialThing)
to a geo84:SpatialThing, and that then can be subclassed:
bornIn
worksIn
establishedIn
...
(could also create the property in an existing namespace, and the
subproperties in another one, as the relationship vocabulary [2])

Thus, I'll be able to describe the location (and specify which kind,
i.e. workplace, establishement place ...) of any foaf:Agent, but also
other things as a ical:VEvent, to point to the city the event is
located, using any geonames Feature instance.

(I could have suggest to subclass foaf:based_near, but as the "near"
notion is relative, I'm not sure that's a good idea to create
subproperties from it)

I'll be happy to get feedback about these ideas.

Best,

Alex.

Received on Friday, 26 January 2007 16:07:14 UTC