GeoNames Forum

FAO has recently launched a geopolitical ontology, providing a new mechanism to describe, manage and exchange geopolitical information. The major goals of the geopolitical ontology are to provide a master reference for the FAO Country Profiles and Mapping Information System (FCPMIS), and to offer users with the most validated and updated geopolitical information.

When working with geopolitical information, people want to find the most up-to-date information as quickly as possible. This is not an easy task and researchers end up spending a considerable amount of time searching through websites and documents to find the required information, and checking its validity and currency.. The new geopolitical ontology provides mechanisms to satisfy these needs.

An Ontology is a kind of dictionary that describes information in a certain domain written in a XML-based standard language understood by humans and computers. The geopolitical ontology describes information about countries, such as Afghanistan, groups like least developed countries, and relationships among countries and groups, such as has border with and is in group.

The current version of FAOs geopolitical ontology provides validated geopolitical information up to the current year. It provides names in FAO languages for all territories and groups as well as mappings among all available coding systems: ISO2, ISO3, AGROVOC, FAOSTAT, FAOTERM, GAUL, UN, and UNDP codes. In addition the ontology tracks historical changes from 1985 up until today; provides geolocations (geographical coordinates); implements relationships among countries and countries or countries and groups including has border with, is predecessor of, is successor of, is administered by, has member, and is in Group.

http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo.asp?lang=en