Geopolitical Ontology
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Use CasesFAO Country
ProfilesServices
© FAO, 2010
Marta Iglesias Sucasas [email protected]
Soonho Kim [email protected]
Virginie Viollier [email protected]
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OUTLINE
Background Geopolitical Ontology Services:
module maker web services
Use Cases in the FAO Country Profiles
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ABOUT FAO
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Mandate: to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy
Established in 1945 One of the major agencies of the UN system Counts 192 member countries HQ in Rome, Italy Over 100 worldwide offices
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FAO IS A KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION
Article 1 of FAO’s Constitution: – “The Organization shall collect, analyse, interpret and
disseminate information relating to nutrition, food and agriculture”
FAO experts’ knowledge network:– Agronomists, foresters, fisheries and livestock specialists,
nutritionists, economists, statisticians, information and communication technology and information management professionals
FAO Internet in numbers:– 4 million visitors/month– 3 million web pages, 100 000 documents, hundreds of
databases and information systems
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CASE STUDY IN 2002
National programmes could produce more effective results through a cross-sectoral, country-based approach.
Main problem: – To provide web users access to FAO information by country
Solution:– The FAO Country Profiles system was designed to access, by
country, all FAO’s major repositories and information systems
It was launched in October 2002: www.fao.org/countryprofiles
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NOT THAT SIMPLE...
FAO had a large number of information systems that included:
– information about countries: e.g. statistical systems– information related to countries: e.g. publications
but.......
Silos: information was produced and used in a circumscribed manner
Lack of integration and means to exchange data
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SIDE EFFECTS
Duplication/multiplication of effort in the:– collection of basic data– maintenance of reference data
Difficulty for users to locate available data regarding a particular country:– distributed throughout the thousands of web
pages or systems
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SOME KEYS TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM
Find out how the different data sources classified the country data
Adoption of a set of agreed metadata standards for countries classification
Ensure quality metadata at the source Identification of authoritative resources for
reference
Mapping of country classifications and country names
Build a system made of rules
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SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGY
The FAO Country Profiles system is up and growing since 2002
Average of more than 50,000 visits per month
The use of semantic technologies was soon identified as a need to improve the system and to ensure that:– it could keep growing on content, and – new requested functionality such as comparison and
aggregation could be implemented
In 2006, FAO decided to build a Geopolitical Ontology to support:– the FAO Country Profiles system, and– major country-based information systems in FAO
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GEOPOLITICAL ONTOLOGY - MOTIVATION
• To improve:• Interoperability: systems exchange and data sharing• Maintenance: names, codes, relationships• Dynamics/change: manage historical changes
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REQUIREMENTS – TYPES
Territories:
– Self-governing: countries, nations
– Non-self-governing US Virgin Islands
– Other areas Antarctica
Groups:
– Geographic: Europe, Asia, Oceania
– Economic: European Union
– Special groups: LIFDC, SIDS, LLDC
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REQUIREMENTS – BASIC DATA
Names: official, short and for lists:
Arabic, Chinese,English, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish
Codes:– ISO-3166 Alpha-2 – ISO-3166 Alpha-3– UN code M.49– FAOSTAT– FAOTERM– AGROVOC– GAUL code– UNDP code– DBPediaID
Coordinates:– Max, Min Latitude– Max, Min Longitude
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REQUIREMENTS – HISTORICAL CHANGES
To track historical changes
West Germany
East GermanyGermany
from 1990 to present
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Czechoslovakia
from 1993 to present
REQUIREMENTS – COMPARE DATA
Land border countries Countries in the same geographic or economic group
Southern Asia
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IMPLEMENTATION
The Geopolitical Ontology Beta version 0.7 launched in 2008:– OWL-DL, UTF-8 encoding
Latest version 1.1 released in July 2010
Information: www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo.asp OWL version: http://aims.fao.org/geopolitical.owl
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IMPLEMENTATION – EXAMPLE
Partial representation of the geopolitical ontology: Example Russian Federation
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GEOPOLITICAL ONTOLOGY SERVICES
To facilitate usage of the Geopolitical Ontology knowledge by existing Information Systems (IS)
Existing IS may not:– want to migrate to OWL– need the full richness of the geopolitical ontology
Geopolitical Ontology module maker service: allows to extract chunks of the ontology and export them in other formats
Most IS already manage *some* country data:– may need to access ontology data to complement their information
Geopolitical Ontology web services: allow the exploitation of geopolitical knowledge through the access to atomic pieces of information only
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MODULE MAKER REQUIREMENTS
Built-in modules = commonly required modules: – FAO members, self-governing territories
– with or without their respective groups
– with or without historical data
Exporting formats: commonly required formats to use/import data modules in other information systems:– RDF, XML, Excel
UTF-8 support: UTF-8 encoding to support, as a minimum, all FAO official languages:– Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish
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MODULE MAKER IMPLEMENTATION
Web Interface JSP
Geopolitical ontology
Jena API
Request via HTTP
Output inRDFXML
Excel
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MODULE MAKER PAGE
5 Modules FAO members only
FAO members and
groups
Self-governing territories
only
Self-governing territories
and their groups
Territories and groups
valid in the current year
(no historical data)
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WEB SERVICES REQUIREMENTS
Architecture compatible with the geopolitical ontology
Reusability of components developed for the module maker
Modular/reusable design and implementation Scalable Simple maintenance RESTful
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WEB SERVICES IMPLEMENTATION
RESTLET framework
Geopolitical ontology
Jena
Request via HTTP
Output in XML
Web Service
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WEB SERVICES PAGE
http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/webservices.asp
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FAO COUNTRY PROFILES USE CASES
UC-1: provide the land border countries of a given country
UC-2: provide the groups a given country belongs to, and all the members of each group
UC-3: list all LIFDC special group members sorted by geographic group
UC-4: provide key statistics (country area, agricultural area, land area, population and GDP) of a given country
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UC-1: LAND BORDER COUNTRIES
DESCRIPTION Return ISO3 code and name of all land border countries (if any) of a given country
INPUT Country ISO3 code, language code
Ex: India in English (IND, EN)
OUTPUT All land border countries ISO3 codes and names in the selected language
Ex: CHN, BTN, MMR, PAK, BGD, NPL, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal
URI www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/borderWith/{country ISO3 code}/{language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/borderWith/IND/EN
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UC-2: GROUPS
DESCRIPTION Return the groups a given country belongs to, and all the members of each group
INPUT Country ISO3 code, language code
Ex: India in English (IND, EN)
OUTPUT All groups acronym and their members (country ISO3 code, and name in selected language)
Ex: SAARC, Southern Asia, Asia, LIFDC, FAO, World
URI www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/inGroup/ {country ISO3 code} / {language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/inGroup/IND/EN
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UC-1, UC-2 IMPLEMENTATION
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UC-3: LIFDC MEMBERS
DESCRIPTION Return all LIFDC special group members sorted by geographic group
INPUT language ISO2 code
Ex: English (EN)
OUTPUT ISO3 code and name for all LIFDC members sorted by geographic group
Ex: America (HTI Haiti, HND Honduras, NIC Nicaragua), Europe (MDA Republic of Moldova), etc.
URI www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/members/LIFDC/ { language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/members/LIFDC/EN
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UC-3 IMPLEMENTATION
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UC-4: KEY STATISTICS
DESCRIPTION Return key statistics data about a given country.
INPUT Country ISO3 code, language code
Ex: Haiti in English (HTI, EN)
OUTPUT Total, unit, year, and notes of country area, agricultural area, land area, population and GDP
Ex: Haiti country area: 2775 (1000 ha), agricultural area: 1790 (1000 ha), land area: 2756 (1000 ha), etc.
URI www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/countryStatisticsAll/ {country ISO3 code} / {language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/countryStatisticsAll/HTI/EN
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UC-4 IMPLEMENTATION
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INFORMATION & CONTACT
Web site www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo.asp
Contact [email protected]
The FAO Country Profiles is a system provided by
FAO’s Office of Knowledge Exchange, Research and Extension www.fao.org/oek/en/