Geonames 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 Geonames Ontology

The Geonames Ontology makes it possible to add geospatial semantic information to the Word Wide Web.

The Ontology for Geonames is available here : http://www.geonames.org/ontology/ontology_v1.0.rdf

An example of RDF description of a geonames "Feature" instance, as obtained through the RDF Webservice at URI http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3020251

    <Feature rdf:about="http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3020251">
        <alternateName xml:lang="fr">Embrun, Hautes-Alpes</alternateName>
        <featureClass rdf:resource="http://www.geonames.org/ontology#P"/>
        <featureCode rdf:resource="http://www.geonames.org/ontology#P.PPL"/>
        <inCountry rdf:resource="http://www.geonames.org/countries/#FR"/>
        <name xml:lang="fr">Embrun</name>
        <parentFeature rdf:resource="http://ws.geonames.org/rdf?geonameId=3013738"/>
        <population>7069</population>
        <wgs84_pos:alt>900</wgs84_pos:alt>
        <wgs84_pos:lat>44.5667</wgs84_pos:lat>
        <wgs84_pos:long>6.5000</wgs84_pos:long>
    </Feature>

Contributor

Bernard Vatant : Mondeca.

More Information

Harry Chen in the Geospatial Semantic Web Blog describes the key concepts of the Geonames Ontology.
Overwiev over Geonames Feature Codes with number of features per code