An area is a geographic area whose geometry may change over time.

1. Use cases & requirements

The Area class should have properties for:

  1. name

    Boston Ward 1

  2. identifier

    ocd-division/country:us/state:ma/place:boston/ward:1

  3. classification

    ward

  4. parent area

    Boston

  5. geometry

    e.g. GeoJSON, KML, GML

2. Standard reuse

Dublin Core, GeoNames and ISA Programme Location Core Vocabulary terms are retained from the inventory of terms.

3. Classes and properties

Term Mapping Definition
Area gn:Feature A geographic area whose geometry may change over time
name gn:name A primary name
identifier dcterms:identifier An issued identifier, e.g. an Open Civic Data Division Identifier
classification gn:featureCode An area category, e.g. city
parent area gn:parentFeature The area that contains this area
geometry locn:geometry A geometry

The use of Open Civic Data Division Identifiers is recommended. The value of the geometry property may be any geometry encoding.

4. Serialization

JSON differences from other RDF serializations:

  • The term classification is used instead of featureCode, to be consistent with the Organization class.
  • The value of the classification property is a string, instead of a gn:Code.
  • The term parent is used instead of containedIn, to be consistent with the Organization class.

5. Code lists

None.