[tdwg-tag] Referring to GBIF distribution map in RDF

[Roderic Page]

Dear Roger,


On 11 May 2010, at 09:42, Roger Hyam wrote:

> Hi Rod,
>
> What we were talking about the other days (and indeed in the  
> corridors of last years TDWG) is the need for a polygon repository.  
> It would be really nice is someone (GBIF?) ran a geoserver that you  
> could register polygons with and once registered they were given a  
> nice URI and became semantically linkable with their metadata in  
> RDF. This would obviously need long term commitment. I'd do it if I  
> had funding....
>
> Within PESI we were talking about it in terms of the TDWG regions  
> and possibly extending them to maritime regions but really there are  
> endless lists of polygons - like the IUCN protected areas or how  
> about the oil spill effected areas etc etc.

This would be useful, it could also contain polygons of species  
distributions (say from RedList).

>
> This probably doesn't answer your question!
>
> Another approach would be to have a literal property with a value  
> that is a Well-known text of the distribution.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_text
>
> This is the approach taken by DwC.
>
> You could use the DwC property or make one up such as  
> rod:hasFootprint="POLYGON ((10 20, 11 20, 11 21, 10 21, 10 20))"

That's what I'm using at the moment, dwc:footprintWKT (as well as  
another vocabulary to describe the points). Just toggle the display at http://bioguid.info/csquare/ 
, or use a linked data client to get the RDF.

>
> You can use multipoint and other ways to describe the distribution  
> data with well known text.
>
> I am sure there are semantic and geospatial people who would object  
> to almost any approach!

Yep. One thing I like about c-squares is that the URI is computable  
from a pair of co-ordinates. Given a lat,long pair you can compute the  
c-square. This makes it possible to do basic search and indexing on  
the URI, plus you don't need to search a service to construct the URI.

For larger, more complex polygons I guess we'd loose this (lots of  
ways to represent a polygon, fewer chances of identity or containment).

Might be fun to think about this, as I'd like to mash up GBIF squares,  
GenBank points, and IUCN ploygons...

Regards

Rod

>
> Good luck
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> On 10 May 2010, at 16:11, Roderic Page wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I'm interested in referring to a GBIF distribution map in RDF, and am
>> having fun figuring out how to do it. One way is to use a c-squares-
>> based URI, see http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/05/referring-to-one-degree-s
>> quare-in-rdf.html (http://tinyurl.com/33ba4kt).
>>
>> The idea is that each 1° × 1° square in a GBIF map has it's own c-
>> squares-based URI, e.g. http://bioguid.info/csquare:3317:364 , and
>> hence a distribution would be a list of these URIs (perhaps with the
>> number of records from each square).
>>
>> Any thoughts on this approach, and whether we have an existing
>> vocabulary to describe these relationships?
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Rod
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> Roderic Page
>> Professor of Taxonomy
>> DEEB, FBLS
>> Graham Kerr Building
>> University of Glasgow
>> Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>>
>> Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
>> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
>> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
>> AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
>> Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
>> Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html