On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Geoff Hay <geoffrey....@otago.ac.nz> wrote: > Hi > The knowledge you are trying to encode should be represented as associations > between individuals (this place contains that place etc) and concepts (city, > park, post office delivery area, etc) (as in OWL) rather than a URI scheme > (see Geonames). The basic idea is to represent places in a way that allows > inference (make implicit knowledge explicit) i.e. logical consequence > e.g. > Explicit: a country only has only one capital city
I am assuming the above is just for illustration, because we have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_multiple_capitals To make matters worse, we also have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_spanning_more_than_one_continent and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_that_overlap_multiple_countries and probably more. > Explicit: NZ is a country > Explicit: Wellington is the capital of NZ > Explicit: 'Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui' is the capital of NZ > Implicit: Wellington and 'Te Upoko o te Ika a Maui' are the same place > > - you cant do this nicely with a URL scheme but an OWL reasoner can make such > conclusions - yehar Semantic Web. Actualy there is really no problem with > your URI scheme otherwise. It looks exactly like what you would expect for > REST Web Services URLs - as long as you don't expect your URLs to be the > ultimate and final identifiers - that would break both of the two main > assumptions behind the semantic web and its underlying formal logics. > > regards > Geoff > ________________________________________ > From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org [discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On > Behalf Of Landon Blake [lbl...@ksninc.com] > Sent: Wednesday, 6 October 2010 12:45 p.m. > To: OSGeo Discussions > Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Representing Places With Intelligent URLs > > A talk at the recent Location Business Summit and some reading I've done > about the semantic web and microformats lately got me to thinking about > a standard way to represent places, place names, place data on the web. > (I must admit I'm a desktop software guy, not a web programmer.) > > I thought it would be awesome if there was a way to create a unique URL > for places that was somewhat intelligent to humans. If this URL could > point to a folder on a server with some basic information about a place, > that would be even better. > > So I took a stab at creating this type of URL for my city, the City of > Stockton. Here it is: > > http://www.standardwebmarkup.org/standard_places/north_america/united_st > ates_of_america/california/san_joaquin_county/city_of_stockton/ > > You can see the URL follows a logical hierarchy, and it would be easy to > determine what the URL for the City of Sacramento, San Joaquin County, > or Victory Park in the City of Stockton would be. Obviously the > continent/country/state/county/city/location URL pattern would have to > change for other parts of the world. > > I put a very simple HTML file with data about the City of Stockton here: > > http://www.standardwebmarkup.org/standard_places/north_america/united_st > ates_of_america/california/san_joaquin_county/city_of_stockton/info.html > > The current info.html file is just a skeleton. It's more of a place > holder right now than anything else. > > My thought was to also put a WKT file (place.wkt) representing the > location of the place and a simple text file (data.txt) with facts about > the place at this same URL: > > http://www.standardwebmarkup.org/standard_places/north_america/united_st > ates_of_america/california/san_joaquin_county/city_of_stockton/ > > Now, if someone wanted to write content about the City of Stockton, they > could simply do something like this: > > <a > href="http://www.standardwebmarkup.org/standard_places/north_america/uni > ted_states_of_america/california/san_joaquin_county/city_of_stockton/">S > tockton</a> > > If everyone that was putting web content about Stockton online did the > same thing, search engine and other tools would be able to link data > from this web content to a single location. > > This becomes even more powerful if we come up with some rules for the > content of the info.html file, place.wkt file, and the data text file. > Here are some examples: > > (1) Specify that the place.wkt file have both a point and a polygon WKT > representation, or a linestring representation, of the place when > appropriate. > > (2) Specify that the info.html file use a list with alternate place > names. This list would be identified with an html class value of > "alternate_place_names". > > (3) Specify that the data.txt file contain a relationships section that > can contain an optional relationship in the form of: City is the County > Seat of County. (Stockton is the County Seat of San Joaquin County.) > > (4) Standardize the way common place facts are stored in the data.txt > file. Population and area are examples. > > I realize there are some problems with this overall scheme. How do you > store a city that straddles a state boundary, for example? Or what if > you want to have a URL for the location of the Pacific Garbage Patch? > > However, I think we could use this system to uniquely identify and > describe a lot of places in the world. We could then work on how to > handle the edge cases. > > Is anyone else interested in ironing out the kinks for a system like > this? Is there already a system like this in place? (If so, I have just > revealed my great ignorance to everyone on this mailing list.) > > I'm interested in setting something up that could be maintained by a > group of geospatial professionals, and not by any one company. > > I'm not sure how this system I describe would tie in with geonames. My > first reaction when I stumbled on geonames is I couldn't find a unique > and human understandable URL for a place. > > Still, I'm interested in microformats and place names, and I'd like to > see a system like this that was "open" and non-proprietary. > > Let me know what you think. > > The Sunburned Surveyor > > > > > Warning: > Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects > including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the > intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, > distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you > have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately. > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > -- Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org Science Commons Fellow, http://sciencecommons.org/about/whoweare/kishor Nelson Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Assertions are politics; backing up assertions with evidence is science ======================================================================= _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
