FAO Ontology
The geopolitical ontology, developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), provides names in seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Spanish, Russian and Italian) and identifiers in various international coding systems (ISO2, ISO3, AGROVOC, FAOSTAT, FAOTERM, GAUL, UN, UNDP and DBPediaID codes) for territories and groups. Moreover, the FAO geopolitical ontology tracks historical changes from 1985 up until today; provides geolocation (geographical coordinates); implements relationships among countries and countries, or countries and groups, including properties such as has border with, is predecessor of, is successor of, is administered by, has members, and is in group; and disseminates country statistics including country area, land area, agricultural area, GDP or population.
The FAO geopolitical ontology provides a structured description of data sources. This includes: source name, source identifier, source creator and source's update date. Concepts are described using the Dublin Core vocabulary (http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/description).
In summary, the main objectives of the FAO geopolitical ontology are:
- To provide the most updated geopolitical information (names, codes, relationships, statistics)
- To track historical changes in geopolitical information
- To improve information management and facilitate standardized data sharing of geopolitical information
- To demonstrate the benefits of the geopolitical ontology to improve interoperability of corporate information systems
It is possible to download the FAO geopolitical ontology in OWL and RDF formats. Documentation is available in the FAO Country Profiles Geopolitical information web page.
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