Toponym Ontology

The Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is a project that intends to add computer-processable meaning (semantics) to the Word Wide Web.

In Feb 2004, The World Wide Web Consortium released the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) as W3C Recommendations. RDF is used to represent information and to exchange knowledge in the Web. OWL is used to publish and share sets of terms called ontologies, supporting advanced Web search, software agents and knowledge management.

The Toponym Ontology

The Toponym Ontology makes it possible to add geospatial semantic information to the Word Wide Web. All over the world 11 million geonames toponyms now have a unique URL with a corresponding RDF web service. Other services describe the relation between toponyms. There are about 31,132 GeoName records for Kenya.

The Ontology for Toponyms is available in OWL : https://ontology.mapearth.co.ke, mappings or
visual webOWL document,
Features of GeoNames ontology were adopted as part of VGI records.

There is the use of 303 a redirection to distinguish the Concept (thing as is) from the Document about it. MapEarth is using predownloaded data of GeoNames, DIVA-GIS and a background base maps with OSM, OpenStreetMap loading as a default but search results are the same with those of the populated Postgres database.

For the town Nakuru in Kenya we have these two URIs :
[1] https://mapearth.co.ke/
[2] http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/about.rdf
For the town Nakuru in Kenya we have these url:
[1] https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000018893/
[2] https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/geoNames/184622/

The first URI [1] stands for the town in Kenya. You use this URI if you want to refer to the town. The second URI [2] is the document with the information geonames has about Nakuru. The Mapearth web server is configured to redirect requests for [1] to [2]. The redirection tells Semantic Web Agents that Embrun is not residing on the geonames server but that geonames has information about it instead. See the blog posting about GeoNames "Concept vs. Document" for more information.

An example of RDF description of a toponym "Feature" document, as obtained through the RDF Webservice at URI https://mapearth.co.ke/about.rdf 

  <rdf:RDF 
    xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" 
    xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" 
    xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" 
    xmlns:ke="https://ontology.mapearth.co.ke" 
    xmlns:owl="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#" 
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" 
    xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#" 
    xmlns:wgs84_pos="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#">
  <tp:Feature rdf:about="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000018893/">
    <rdfs:isDefinedBy rdf:resource="http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/about.rdf"/>
    <tp:name>Nakuru</tp:name>
    <tp:alternateName xml:lang="oc">Nakuru</tp:alternateName>
    <tp:featureClass rdf:resource="https://ontology.mapearth.co.ke"/>
    <tp:featureCode rdf:resource="https://ontology.mapearth.co.ke"/>
    <tp:countryCode>ke</tp:countryCode>
    <tp:population>7069</tp:population>
    <tp:postalCode>05200</tp:postalCode>
    <tp:postalCode>05201</tp:postalCode>
    <tp:postalCode>05202</tp:postalCode>
    <tp:postalCode>05208</tp:postalCode>
    <tp:postalCode>05209</tp:postalCode>
    <wgs84_pos:lat>44.56387</wgs84_pos:lat>
    <wgs84_pos:long>6.49526</wgs84_pos:long>
    <t:parentFeature rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000018893/"/>
    <tp:parentCountry rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/card-record/KE-G010564/"/>
    <tp:parentADM1 rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000000001/"/>
    <tp:parentADM2 rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000000002/"/>
    <tp:parentADM3 rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000000003/>
    <tp:parentADM4 rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000000004/"/>
    <tp:nearbyFeatures rdf:resource="http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/nearby.rdf"/>
    <tp:locationMap rdf:resource="https://mapearth.co.ke/hyper/prototype-gazetteer/KE-PG000000000001/"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_County"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_County"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_Town_Constituency"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_County"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_County"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_County"/>
    <tp:wikipediaArticle rdf:resource="https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakuru_County"/>
  </tp:Feature>
  <foaf:Document rdf:about="http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/about.rdf">
    <foaf:primaryTopic rdf:about="http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/ontology/"/>
    <cc:license rdf:resource="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/"/>
    <cc:attributionURL rdf:resource="http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/"/>
    <cc:attributionName rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string">GeoNames</cc:attributionName>
    <dcterms:created rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date">2006-01-15</dcterms:created>
    <dcterms:modified rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#date">2010-04-19</dcterms:modified>
  </foaf:Document>
  </rdf:RDF>

Linked Data

The Features in the MapEarth Semantic Web are interlinked with each other. Depending on applicability the following documents are available for a Feature :

The children (counties for a country, administrative subdivisions for a county, ...). As an example the children of Kenya : mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/contains.rdf

The neighbours (neigbouring countries). As an example the neighbours of Kenya : mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/neighbours.rdf

Nearby features. Nearby to the Lake Naivasha are Hell's Gate,Olkalia falls& Mau escarpment;a breath taking view, ...: http://mercator.elte.hu/~kdncx6/ontology/nearby.rdf

Entry Points into the GeoNames Semantic Web

There are several ways how you can enter the GeoNames Semantic Web :

  • start from Kenya and follow the Linked Data links.
  • use the MapEarth search webservice with the type=rdf parameter option.
  • download the database dump and construct the url for the features using the pattern "http://mapearth.co.ke/toponymId/"
  • RDF dump GeoNames data is of about 31,173 entries rdf triples (2020 12 14). The dump has one rdf document per toponym on every line of the file when downloading from source. Note: The file is large. Make sure the tool you use to uncompress is able to deal with the size and does not stop after 2GB, an issue that happens with some old (windows) tool versions.
  • RDF dump with 5,401 features(Prototype), and about 31,173 entries rdf triples (2020 12 14). The dump has one rdf document per toponym on every line of the file when downloading from source. Note: The file is large. Make sure the tool you use to uncompress is able to deal with the size and does not stop after 2GB, an issue that happens with some old (windows) tool versions.
  • RDF dump with 158 features(place-name), and about 158 entries rdf triples (2020 12 14). The dump has one rdf document per toponym on every line of the file when downloading from source. Note: The file is large. Make sure the tool you use to uncompress is able to deal with the size and does not stop after 2GB, an issue that happens with some old (windows) tool versions.

Contact

Daniel Orongo : Places in Kenya. (ontology)

Daniel Orongo (implementation)

More Information

Version History

2020 December, Version 1.1

Version 1.1

  • Has : tp:toponymsFeature, subclass of tp:Feature.
  • Has : explicit property tp:toponymsID, mandatory and unique for each tp:ToponymsFeature instance.
  • : owl:FunctionalProperty declarations for properties attached to tp:Feature, are now replaced by local cardinality restrictions on tp:toponymsFeature
  • The tp:Feature class and attached properties can therefore be used in the open world for features not necessarily identified in the Gazetteer data base, or with partial descriptions.
  • : Equivalent classes and superclasses of toponyms:Feature in other vocabularies.
  • : new feature codes for historical features.
    • Metadata!
    • Change TP:featureClass and tp:featureCode superproperty from dc:subject to dc:type.
    • Property chain ensuring consistency of feature code and feature class values (OWL 3.0.3).
    • Indication of new and deprecated feature codes using skos:historyNote
    • Multilingual labels for codes (russian, bulgarian, swedish and norwegian)
    • Explicit code values using skos:notation, name properties, subproperties of skos labels
    • New types of alternate names (historical, colloquial) and labels for alternate names.
    • Equivalent classes matching feature codes in various ontologies such as schema.org, linkedgeodata.org, dbpedia.org, INSEE ontology are provided in a separate file for geonames-ontology at http://www.geonames.org/ontology/mappings_v3.0.1.rdf
    • URIs for parent admin divisions of County, Subcounty, Location and Sub-location
    • Metadata for license information

Other useful readings

Version 1.0 : URIs with redirect, linked data (contains, neighbours, nearby)

Version 1.0