Geopolitical Ontology

FAO’s GEOPOLITICAL ONTOLOGY and SERVICES

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Use CasesFAO Country

ProfilesServices

© FAO, 2013

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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/en/ 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/en/

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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/en/

Contact fao-country-profiles@fao.org Caprazli, Kafkas (OCP)