Dear Francesco, in a paper published one year ago on International Journal of Digital Libraries written by myself, Achille Felicetti and Paola Ronzino we addressed a similar issue concerning Pleiades, i.e. the mapping of their geographic entities to the CRM. I am sending you separately the paper as you can find there the details of the solution we proposed.
In short, the general solution we suggest is to consider “real” Pleiades places (as opposed to imaginary, unknown or non-existing places) as instances of E92 Spacetime Volume that P161 has spatial projection on an E53 Place, which in Pleiades terminology is called a location. Notice that this E53 is the widest portion of space occupied by the related E92 in its life. If you want to consider the location extension at some specified instant, or during a specified time-span, like “Rome in the 19th century”, you need to slice the E92 at that time-span and obtain a derived Spacetime Volume, which the CRM calls E93 Presence (in my opinion, with a poetic licence), whose spatial projection gives the spatial occupation in the specified time. With geonames the situation is probably simpler as it considers, if I am not wrong, time-snapshots of places taken at the present. Actually in the paper we considered a more complicated case where the “place” may not be, or be known to be, a real one. As regards the geonames definition of PPL populated place as "a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work”, it seems to me inconsistent, vague and contradictory. When is an assemblage of housings (and factories, as it seems necessary) enough agglomerated to be a PPL? For example, are a PPL the examples of “diffused urbanization” (called so by land planners), typical of some areas, e.g. the North-East of Italy, characterized by the lack of agglomeration? Is an area populated by pensioners only a PPL, as by definition its inhabitants don’t work? What about areas inhabited by commuters, who work elsewhere? How many people are necessary to rank a place as a populated one? This definition may perhaps be used for practical purposes, and when such populated places are defined (and named) by administrative rules. Also, in my experience geonames is impractical as a gazetteer for cultural heritage, history or archaeology. Unfortunately the much more appropriate Pleiades covers only until Early Medieval geography - I don’t know if there is anything similar for later periods. I think that the above answers to your questions; it may need some further refinement if you are interested in associating to the E92 its dwellings or its inhabitants. For the buildings B1, as they can rapidly change, be built or disappear, the link between the E92 and the B1s is through the space both occupy, the E53 Place spatial projection of E92 and the location of each B1: a B1 Built Work (a building) P53 has former or current location E53 Place (the building lot) that P89 falls within E53 Place (the spatial projection of the E92, i.e. its location). For the people, a quick-and-dirty solution is P74 has current or former residence at the E53 Place, location of the PPL; but I would prefer the following construct: the E92 (the PPL) P11 had participant E74 Group (the citizenship), considering all inhabitants as participating in the existence of E92. It is interesting to note that with a little improvement the above would avoid anachronisms as buildings could be related to a town only for the time of their existence, which must be part of the E92’s time-span to which they are related through P160 has temporal projection. Interesting to think what about ruins e.g. in archaeological sites: they are still related in space, but not in time, as they survived to the town destruction; maybe also B1 should have a time dimension...but that’s anothe story. Same for people's participation (= living in) towns, with of course more mobility. Best regards Franco Prof. Franco Niccolucci Director, VAST-LAB PIN - U. of Florence Scientific Coordinator ARIADNE - PARTHENOS Piazza Ciardi 25 59100 Prato, Italy > Il giorno 25 ago 2017, alle ore 23:54, Francesco Beretta > <[email protected]> ha scritto: > > Dear all, > > One of the basic place type in geonames.org is : > > > PPL populated place a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of > buildings where people live and work > > > A populated place in this sense means different things : > • an agglomeration of buildings; > • a community of people; > • the projection of them on the Earth surface. > > My question is: how should we model these entities and their relationship ? > > • an agglomeration of buildings -> E24_Physical_Man-Made_Thing or, more > precisely, B1 Built Work ? > • a community of people -> E74_Group or E4_Period > • the projection of both on the Earth surface -> E53_Place > > "P156_occupies" links E24 and E53: but the spatial footprint of E24 (the > agglomeration of buildings) can change over time: new, larger city walls are > built, etc. > Are these different places (E53) which are related to different time-spans ? > Or the same place but in a more abstract sense ? > > > And also: which class is suited for modelling > "FRST forest(s) an area dominated by tree vegetation" > or > "VINS vineyards plantings of grapevines" ? > > And for mountain or valley ? > > Can we model all this just with E53 Place and a vocabulary of types ? > > Were can I find some examples for modelling these different kinds of 'Places' > using the CRM ? > > Thank you for some hints ! > > Francesco > _______________________________________________ > Crm-sig mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
