[tdwg-tag] Fwd: [Tc] Geo URI proposal in draft stage in the IETF

Paul Kirk p.kirk at cabi.org
Tue Jul 21 14:11:58 CEST 2009


and it appears NASA still hasn't learnt it's lesson ...
 
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17350-nasa-criticised-for-sticking
-to-imperial-units.html
 
Paul

________________________________

From: tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
[mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Peter DeVries
Sent: 21 July 2009 12:56
To: Bob Morris
Cc: Technical Architecture Group mailing list;
tdwg-geospatial at lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] Fwd: [Tc] Geo URI proposal in draft stage in the
IETF


Hi Bob, 

You make several good points and I hope that this moves forward.

I am less thrilled about not standardizing on WGS84.

We have agreed to use metric and other standards and I think that
data expressed using other Datum's will be largely misinterpreted.

Arthur Chapman has convinced me that it may be impossible to
get users to upload their GPS data in WGS84, but I think that
it would be best if GBIF and others converted the data in regional
Datum's into WGS84 and exposed it as WGS84.

Encouraging the use of regional Datum's instead of WGS84 will
likely lead to a number of scientific mistakes.

I am sure your are familiar with these stories, but others on the list
may not.


Math error equals loss of Mars orbiter


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_15_156/ai_57155808/

NASA reported Sept. 30 that it had lost the $125 million Mars Climate
Orbiter because the force exerted by the orbiter's thrusters remained in
the system of units based on pounds and feet rather than being converted
to metric.
...
In 1985, he notes, controllers calculated distance in feet rather than
nautical miles and inadvertantly pointed a mirror on the space shuttle
Discovery away from Earth instead of toward a laser on Hawaii's Mauna
Kea.


- Pete



On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Bob Morris <morris.bob at gmail.com>
wrote:


	I would say its concern is somewhat narrower than the
illustrations in
	 Bricklin's http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/
	
	The IETF document is a draft proposal to have "geo" be an IANA
	registered URI scheme. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_scheme)
	whereas the w3 Bricklin stuff is an informal (as you observe)
	vocabulary.
	
	Were the IETF docment be accepted in its proposed draft form,
the
	expression "geo:51.47026,-2.59466" would be a URI and so in
RDF/XML
	one might see expressions like
	
	    <based_near rdf:about="geo:51.47026,-2.59466"/>
	
	for the example from the Bricklin document's element
	
	   <based_near geo:lat="51.47026" geo:long="-2.59466"/>
	
	All of that would support RDF semantic reasoning. For example,
it
	would support the ability to axiomatize something like "If point
p is
	in feature f, and if feature f is_near point q, then point p
is_near
	point q".
	
	But in RDF you can't talk about resources that don't have a URI,
so
	the IETF proposal would make it possible for geographic entities
to be
	RDF resources. Most importantly, this would happen in such a way
that
	one can tell when two geographic resources are the same. For
example,
	the comparison definition in the IETF proposal specifies
	http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/geo/XGR-geo-20071023/#owl that
two
	points are the same if their coordinates (and a few other
things) are
	mathematically the same. Thus, slightly oversimplified,
	geo:51.47026,-2.59466 and geo:51.470260,-2.59466  (note trailing
0 in
	lat) always designate the same resource,  which is something one
can
	only wish for in the nascent vocabulary semi-proposal, widely
adopted
	despite Bricklin's warning that it is not in the W3C
recommendation
	track.
	
	In summary, the IETF proposal would elevate at least points to
the
	status of entities in their own right, as opposed to "merely"
	properties of some other entity.
	
	http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/geo/XGR-geo-20071023/ goes a
little
	farther than the Bricklin document, and identifies a need to
update
	that document.  It also
	provides an OWL model of the main elements of GML:
	
	 "Geo OWL provides an ontology which closely matches the GeoRSS
	feature model and which utilizes the existing GeoRSS vocabulary
for
	geographic properties and classes. The practical consequence is
that
	fragments of GeoRSS XML within RSS 1.0 or Atom which conform to
the
	GeoRSS specification will also conform to the Geo OWL ontology
	(front-matter aside). Thus, the ontology provides a compatible
	extension of GeoRSS practice for use in more general RDF
	
contexts."--http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/geo/XGR-geo-20071023/#owl
	
	So the IETF proposal should be welcome as helping uniform
application
	of Geo OWL, should it ever make it into the W3 recommendation
process.
	 Maybe Flip Dibner knows what the status of Geo OWL is.
	
	--Bob Morris
	


	On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Peter DeVries
<pete.devries at gmail.com> wrote:
	>
	> This appears to be a more formalized version of the current
w3C geo: standard.
	> Which people should also be familiar with since it is widely
used.
	> http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/
	>
	> - Pete
	>
	> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Bob Morris
<morris.bob at gmail.com> wrote:
	>>
	>> TDWG should track this and consider requiring/recommending
its use if it is accepted by IETF
	>> Bob Morris
	>>
	>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
	>> From: <creed at opengeospatial.org>
	>> Date: Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:55 AM
	>> Subject: [Tc] Geo URI proposal in draft stage in the IETF
	>> To: tc at lists.opengeospatial.org
	>>
	>>
	>> There is an internet draft that may be of interest to the
OGC. I have
	>> provided some review and comments but the authors are seeking
additional
	>> feedback. Feel free to contact the authors directly. There
are GML
	>> examples in the document.
	>>
	>> http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-geopriv-geo-uri-01.txt
	>>
	>> This document specifies an Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
for
	>>   geographic locations using the 'geo' scheme name.  A 'geo'
URI
	>>   identifies a physical location in a two- or
three-dimensional
	>>   coordinate reference system in a compact, simple,
human-readable, and
	>>   protocol independent way.  The default coordinate reference
system
	>>   used is WGS-84.
	>>
	>> Cheers
	>>
	>> Carl
	>>
	>>
	>>
	>>
	>> _______________________________________________
	>> Tc mailing list
	>> Tc at lists.opengeospatial.org
	>> https://lists.opengeospatial.org/mailman/listinfo/tc
	>>
	>> All OGC members are strongly encouraged to maintain a
subscription to this list.
	>>
	>>
	>>
	>> --
	>> Robert A. Morris
	>> Professor of Computer Science
	>> UMASS-Boston
	>> ram at cs.umb.edu
	>> http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
	>> http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
	>> http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/calendar.html
	>> phone (+1)617 287 6466
	>>
	>> _______________________________________________
	>> tdwg-tag mailing list
	>> tdwg-tag at lists.tdwg.org
	>> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag
	>>
	>
	>
	>
	> --
	>
---------------------------------------------------------------
	> Pete DeVries
	> Department of Entomology
	> University of Wisconsin - Madison
	> 445 Russell Laboratories
	> 1630 Linden Drive
	> Madison, WI 53706
	> ------------------------------------------------------------
	
	
	
	
	--
	
	Robert A. Morris
	Professor of Computer Science
	UMASS-Boston
	ram at cs.umb.edu
	http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
	http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
	http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram/calendar.html
	phone (+1)617 287 6466
	




-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
------------------------------------------------------------

Find out about CABI's global summit on 'Food security in a climate of change' at www.cabiglobalsummit.com 
19 - 21 October 2009, London, UK.

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