http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/en/ The FAO geopolitical ontology and related services have been developed to facilitate data exchange and sharing in a standardized manner among systems managing information about countries and/or regions. The geopolitical ontology ensures that FAO and associated partners can rely on a master reference for geopolitical information, as it manages names in multiple languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Italian); maps standard coding systems (UN, ISO, FAOSTAT, AGROVOC, etc); provides relations among territories (land borders, group membership, etc); and tracks historical changes. © FAO: http://www.fao.org

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
FAO’s GEOPOLITICAL ONTOLOGY
and SERVICES
FAO Country Geopolitical
Services Use Cases
Profiles Ontology
© FAO, 2013

2. OUTLINE
 Background
 Geopolitical Ontology
 Services:
 module maker
 web services
 Use Cases in the FAO Country Profiles
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3. 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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4. 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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5. 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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6. 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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7. 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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8. 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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9. 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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10. GEOPOLITICAL ONTOLOGY - MOTIVATION
• To improve:
• Interoperability: systems exchange and data sharing
• Maintenance: names, codes, relationships
• Dynamics/change: manage historical changes
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11. REQUIREMENTS – TYPES
Territories: Groups:
– Self-governing: – Geographic:
 countries, nations  Europe, Asia, Oceania
– Non-self-governing – Economic:
 US Virgin Islands  European Union
– Other areas – Special groups:
 Antarctica  LIFDC, SIDS, LLDC
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12. REQUIREMENTS – BASIC DATA
Codes: Names:
– ISO-3166 Alpha-2  official, short and for lists:
– ISO-3166 Alpha-3 Arabic, Chinese,
English, French, Italian,
– UN code M.49
Russian and Spanish
– FAOSTAT
– FAOTERM
– AGROVOC
– GAUL code Coordinates:
– UNDP code – Max, Min Latitude
– DBPediaID – Max, Min Longitude
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13. REQUIREMENTS – HISTORICAL CHANGES
 To track historical changes
from 1993 to present
Czech Republic
Czechoslovakia
Slovakia
from 1990 to present
West Germany
Germany
East Germany
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14. REQUIREMENTS – COMPARE DATA
 Land border countries
 Countries in the same geographic or economic group
Southern Asia

15. 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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16. IMPLEMENTATION – EXAMPLE
 Partial representation of the geopolitical ontology:
Example Russian Federation
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17. 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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18. 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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19. MODULE MAKER IMPLEMENTATION
Request via HTTP
Web
JSP
Interface Output in
RDF
XML
Excel
Jena API
Geopolitical
ontology
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20. 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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21. 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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22. WEB SERVICES IMPLEMENTATION
Request via HTTP RESTLET
framework
Output in XML
Jena
Geopolitical
ontology
Web Service
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23. WEB SERVICES PAGE
http://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/webservices/en/
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24. 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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25. 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/{cou
ntry ISO3 code}/{language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/borderWith/IN
D/EN
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26. 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/E
N
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27. UC-1, UC-2 IMPLEMENTATION
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28. 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/LIF
DC/ { language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/members/LI
FDC/EN
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29. UC-3 IMPLEMENTATION
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30. 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/countryStatistics
All/ {country ISO3 code} / {language code}
Ex:www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/ws/countryStatisti
csAll/HTI/EN
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31. UC-4 IMPLEMENTATION
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32. INFORMATION & CONTACT
 Web site
 www.fao.org/countryprofiles/geoinfo/en/
 Contact
 fao-country-profiles@fao.org
 Caprazli, Kafkas (OCP)
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