Geopolitical ontology

The geopolitical ontology provides a new mechanism to describe, manage, exchange geopolitical information. It provides validated geopolitical information up to the current year. It covers names in FAO languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Spanish and Russian) 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.

Background

Many people working with geopolitical information are looking to find the most current and up-to-date information in a fast and efficient manner. In reality, however, researchers end up spending a considerable amount of time searching through websites and documents to find the required information. A lot of time is also spent checking that data retrieved is not outdated or incorrect. Finally, when users want to apply this geopolitical information into their own systems or to share it with other experts they need to do some manual or automatic modification to process the data into suitable forms that will allow their systems to share/exchange easily. A new geopolitical ontology could provide a way to satisfy their needs.

Geopolitical ontology

Figure 1. An example of concepts and relationship in the geopolitical ontology.

Geopolitical ontology is an ontology which describes geopolitical information using concepts and their relationships in a given domain. Ontology is a kind of dictionary that describes information in a certain domain written in a XML-based standard language ( OWL- Web Ontology Language) understood by not only human, but also by machine. The power of description information in ontology is that it enables to hold a domain knowledge to an ontology by defining concepts and relationships among concepts. The advantage of XML-based language is that it provides a way to communicate with other systems without special effort such as data modification or conversion. The abiliy of machine processing supports deduction of new information from given information. Geopolitical ontology was born receiving those characteristics from ontology.

• Concept as abstracted knowledge is explicitly implemented by individuals and classes in the geopolitical ontology. Individual is defined as an object perceived from the real world in geopolitical domain (i.e. “Ethiopia“, and “least developed countries”).

Class is defined as a set of individuals sharing their common properties. For example, as shown in Figure 1, Ethiopia, an object from the real world,is defined as an individual. Common properties from individuals (Ethiopia,Republic of Korea, Italy and so on)were captured by defining a class called "self-governing". So, in Figure 1, the left pink circle illustrates the class "self-governing" and "Ethiopia" is an individual contained by the class "Self-governing".the right green circle presents the class "group" and "least developed countries" is an individual included in the class "group".

• Relationships between concepts is explicitly implemented by object properties between individuals of two classes such as "has member" and "is in group", shown in Figure 1 and by data type properties between between individuals of classes and literals and XML datatypes.

Objectives

• To provide the most current and valid geopolitical information to users
• To support historical change of geopolitical information
• To improve management and share of geopolitical information
• To demonstrate the benefits of the geopolitical ontology to improve interoperability of corporate information systems

Features

The geopolitical ontology contains :

• Area types¹:
  • Territories: self-governing, non-self-governing, disputed, other
  • Groups: geographic, economic, organizations, special groups

• Names (official, short and names for lists) in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Russian
• International codes: UN code – M49, ISO-3166 Alpha-2 and Alpha-3, UNDP code, GAUL code, FAOSTAT, AGROVOC and FAOTERM
• Coordinates: maximum latitude, minimum latitude, maximum longitude, minimum longitude

• Relations:
  • Groups membership
  • Neighbours
  • Historic changes: predecessor, successor, valid since², valid until³

¹ In cases where an area (territory or group) changed in time but kept the name, the ontology differentiates the two areas by sub-fixing the name of the obsolete one with the year (e.g. “FAO 2006”). The year indicates the beginning of validity of that particular area.

² The value of the datatype property "validSince" gives the starting year of validity of the area (territory or group) it is associated with. The geopolitical ontology traces back historic changes only until 1985. Therefore if an area has a validSince = 1985, this indicates that the area is valid since 1985 or before.

³ The value of the datatype property "validUntil" gives the last year of validity of the area (territory or group) it is associated with. In case the area is currently valid, this value is set by default to 9999.

Implementation into OWL

The geopolitical ontology is implemented in OWL ontology language. It consists of classes, properties, and individual and restrictions of classes and properties. Table 1 shows all classes,brief explanation and some individuals belong to each class, in order users to understand better. Note that the current version of the geopolitical ontology does not have any info about "disputed" territory. Table 2 and Table 3 illustrates datatype properties and object property.

File:Class and instances in the geopolitical ontology v 1.png

Table 1. Classes and instances in the geopolitical ontology.

File:Datatype properties in the geopolitical ontology v 1.png

Table 2. datatype properties in the geopolitical ontology.

File:Object properties in the geopolitical ontology v 1.png

Table 3. object properties in the geopolitical ontology.

Download and documentation

The current version (0.7) of the geopolitical ontology can be downloaded from the FAO Country Profiles and Mapping Information System (FCPMIS).

• download site: http://www.fao.org/aims/geopolitical.owl
• documentation: http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geopol_v7/index.html

FAO disclaimer

The designations employed and the presentation of material do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Case study

File:Geopolitical ontology in Country Profiles December 5 2008 v 1.png

Figure 2. a website of introducing the geopolitical ontology in FAO Country Profiles.

The FAO Country profiles and Mapping Information System (FCPMIS) is a web-based multilingual information portal presenting FAO’s vast archive of knowledge on food and agriculture, categorizing by country and thematic area. FCPMIS provides users around the world to access country-based information without searching heterogonous data sources. In May 2008, FAO launched a project to upgrade the FCPMIS. The project aims to enhance users' access to country information and to increase collaboration between FAO and partners in other organizations. Since FAO tries to promote the dissemination of new knowledge/technology into agricultural information management, applying the geopolitical ontology to FCPMIS became one of major tasks to make successful upgrade in this system. The following three benefits are acquired during the adaption of geopolitical ontology in FCPMIS.

• The geopolitical ontology provides validated and the latest international standards for geopolitical information and a new mechanism to manage and exchange geopolitical information.
• The geopolitical ontology enhances content aggregation and synchronization from multiple source repositories in FCPMIS.
• The geopolitical ontology enables FCPMIS to improve users’ information access through aggregation and comparison of data in neighbor countries or regions.

Figure 2 shows a website of the geopolitical ontology in FCPMIS to introduce the geoplitical ontology to users.

Communities

A group called "Country Information Exchange in Food and Agriculture" provides a place for experts and people interested in geopolitical information to get together to discuss issues, share news, and submit questions and provide answers. Currently 30 members participate in this group from Italy, Poland, Netherlands, India, Canada, France, and US. Discussions are going on and cover topics such as:

• Global Irrigation situation for agriculture- fruit and vegetable production
• Looking for an expert in Agriculture and Water Usage in MENA + Indian Subcontinent
• What international coding systems are used in FAO / or other organizations?

Links

• AGROVOC
• FAOSTAT
• FAO Terminology (FAOTERM)
• Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL)
• International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
• United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD)