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mcwdsi / geographical-entity-ontology

An ontology and inventory of geopolitical entities (such as sovereign states and their administrative subdivisions) as well as various geographical regions (including but not limited to the specific ones over which the governments have jurisdiction)
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Just wondering whether or how "Taiwan" is handled? #1

Closed Public-Health-Bioinformatics closed 7 years ago

Public-Health-Bioinformatics commented 8 years ago

I see a treatment of Palestinian Occupied Territories which seems appropriate. Is "Taiwan" a similarly complicated case?

hoganwr commented 8 years ago

I've been looking in the OWL files and for some reason, Taiwan seems to be missing. I'm looking at the source data I used to create the OWL files and don't see Taiwan there either.

I'm going to log an issue on the tracker. We're pretty busy right now, but I should have the situation resolved in about two weeks.

In the meantime if you have suggestions on how to handle Taiwan's unique status (sovereign state vs. dependency), I'm all ears.

On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 1:00 PM, Damion Dooley notifications@github.com wrote:

I see a treatment of Palestinian Occupied Territories which seems appropriate. Is "Taiwan" a similarly complicated case?

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ufbmi/geographical-entity-ontology/issues/1

hoganwr commented 8 years ago

I see this is already logged as an issue.

Public-Health-Bioinformatics commented 8 years ago

K, thanks, and no rush. Taiwan is a tough one. Just reading wikipedia on it makes my head spin. Not quite as bad as bangladeshi-Indian 1st/2nd/3rd order enclaves but still a doozie. No advice to offer!

Damion

From: Bill Hogan notifications@github.com<mailto:notifications@github.com> Reply-To: ufbmi/geographical-entity-ontology reply@reply.github.com<mailto:reply@reply.github.com> Date: Friday, April 29, 2016 at 4:55 AM To: ufbmi/geographical-entity-ontology geographical-entity-ontology@noreply.github.com<mailto:geographical-entity-ontology@noreply.github.com> Cc: Damion Dooley damion.dooley@bccdc.ca<mailto:damion.dooley@bccdc.ca>, Author author@noreply.github.com<mailto:author@noreply.github.com> Subject: Re: [ufbmi/geographical-entity-ontology] Just wondering whether or how "Taiwan" is handled? (#1)

I've been looking in the OWL files and for some reason, Taiwan seems to be missing. I'm looking at the source data I used to create the OWL files and don't see Taiwan there either.

I'm going to log an issue on the tracker. We're pretty busy right now, but I should have the situation resolved in about two weeks.

In the meantime if you have suggestions on how to handle Taiwan's unique status (sovereign state vs. dependency), I'm all ears.

On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 1:00 PM, Damion Dooley notifications@github.com<mailto:notifications@github.com> wrote:

I see a treatment of Palestinian Occupied Territories which seems appropriate. Is "Taiwan" a similarly complicated case?

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/ufbmi/geographical-entity-ontology/issues/1

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ufbmi/geographical-entity-ontology/issues/1#issuecomment-215692638

dillerm commented 7 years ago

After a bit of background research, we've come to the conclusion that Taiwan meets the definition for 'de facto sovereign state' (i.e., sovereign state), but does not meet the definition for 'de jure sovereign state' (i.e., a state whose sovereignty is acknowledged by the international community, which is the UN). The rationale behind this can be found at GEO's Wiki.

Our current definition for 'sovereign state', which is borrowed from the Montevideo Convention, refers to de facto state. As such, in order to represent Taiwan, we'll need to create a class for de jure state, which I'll propose a definition for below:

A sovereign state whose political sovereignty has been recognized by the United Nations, in accordance with international law.

We will then want to move all OWL individuals that currently are rdf:type "sovereign state" to rdf:type "de facto sovereign state." We should also, presumably, add a comment or two to this class that briefly clarifies the process through which a state receives international recognition (i.e., through full membership to the UN), and that this membership supersedes all other claims to that state's sovereignty.

hoganwr commented 7 years ago

Just to be clear, all the nation instances in GEO are already rdf:type sovereign state (de facto state). They all need to be moved to de jure sovereign state. Then we can add Taiwan and others as de facto states.