GeoSPARQL and Ordnance Survey Linked Data
The Ordnance Survey Linked Data contains lots of qualitative spatial information – that is topological relationships between different regions. We have information about what each region contains, is within and touches (e.g. Cambridgeshire touches Norfolk). These relationships were encoded using an Ordnance Survey vocabulary as there was nothing suitable at the time. Since then a new standard has emerged from the OGC called GeoSPARQL. In the long term we would probably like to migrate the OS data over to the GeoSPARQL standard, but to stop third party applications using the data from breaking we decided not to on this release. However, mappings from the OS vocabulary have been made to the GeoSPARQL vocabulary via ‘owl:equivalentProperty’. So each of the spatial relationships now have a link to their equivalent in GeoSPARQL. Please see: contains, within, touches, equals, disjoint and partially overlaps for more details on which properties they are related to in GeoSPARQL.
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Looking at the property, I notice it’s range is a , but this class is not an owl:equivalentClass with the geo:Geometry GeoSPARQL class, nor is the property an owl:equivalentProperty with geo:asGML. Why? Would it not make sense to implement the full GeoSPARQL standard in this beta phase, especially given that Ordnance Survey is a creator of the standard? Are these hitherto unused GeoSPARQL classes and properties not “some standard way of representing geometries in RDF”?
Correction:
Looking at the *hxxp://beta.data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/geometry/extent* property, I notice it’s range is a *hxxp://beta.data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/geometry/AbstractGeometry*, but this class is not an owl:equivalentClass with the geo:Geometry GeoSPARQL class, nor is the *hxxp://beta.data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/geometry/asGML* property …
The links did not show up. If these links show up, please delete this post.
Thanks for noticing those missing links – they will be added.
As for releasing with the full GeoSPARQL spec…this linked data is a product that customers use and as such we need to make the transition to new specs as painless as possible. Swapping from the old OS vocabulary to GeoSPARQL needs to be done gradually so not to break applications using the data.