GMEOW Locations Module

• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/places
• Tier: core
• Group: core

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 496 terms and contributes 369 mapping or projection rows. Use it when its terms match the native fact you want to preserve; use the linkage tables to see how those facts leave GMEOW for consumer vocabularies.

Dependencies

• gmeow:slices/coreference
• gmeow:slices/documents
• gmeow:slices/kernel
• gmeow:slices/lifecycle
• gmeow:slices/observations
• gmeow:slices/rights
• gmeow:slices/temporal

Consumers

• Every located fact: contacts, events, the mail corpus, jurisdiction tenures; the GeoSPARQL projection.

Local Map

Examples

Located Place

• Source: slices/core/places/examples/located-place.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:CoordinateObservation, gmeow:GeoCoordinates, gmeow:Organization, gmeow:Place, gmeow:assertedAt, gmeow:authorityLink, gmeow:confidence, gmeow:containedInPlace, gmeow:coordinateObservationOf, gmeow:coordinateResult
• External prefixes: owl, skos, wd, xsd

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: places as first-class located things, not address strings
#. A containment hierarchy (country ⊃ region ⊃ city ⊃ site) carries
# placeType, gazetteer coreference (authorityLink + skos:exactMatch, never
# owl:sameAs — P5), and coordinates two ways: the flat gmeow:hasCoordinates for
# the 80% case, and a reified gmeow:CoordinateObservation that makes the Principle
# 11 reference frame EXPLICIT (a latitude is meaningless without the frame it is
# expressed in) and carries the measurement's vantage, method, and confidence.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/places/> .
@prefix wd:    <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/> .
@prefix skos:  <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

# --- The containment spine: each place is a first-class Place, related by
#     gmeow:containedInPlace, with gazetteer alignment by reference.
ex:canada a gmeow:Place ;
    gmeow:name "Canada"@en ;
    gmeow:placeType gmeow:placeTypeCountry ;
    gmeow:authorityLink wd:Q16 ;
    skos:exactMatch wd:Q16 .

ex:alberta a gmeow:Place ;
    gmeow:name "Alberta"@en ;
    gmeow:placeType gmeow:placeTypeRegion ;
    gmeow:containedInPlace ex:canada ;
    gmeow:authorityLink wd:Q1951 ;
    skos:exactMatch wd:Q1951 .

ex:edmonton a gmeow:Place ;
    gmeow:name "Edmonton"@en ;
    gmeow:placeType gmeow:placeTypeCity ;
    gmeow:containedInPlace ex:alberta ;
    gmeow:authorityLink wd:Q2096 ;
    skos:exactMatch wd:Q2096 ;
    # The flat coordinate shortcut: a GeoCoordinates point, no provenance needed.
    gmeow:hasCoordinates ex:edmontonCoords .

ex:edmontonCoords a gmeow:GeoCoordinates ;
    gmeow:latitude "53.5461"^^xsd:decimal ;
    gmeow:longitude "-113.4938"^^xsd:decimal .

# --- A surveyed site, with the reified observation form: the SAME place can
#     carry competing measurements (different vantage/method/confidence), each in
#     its explicit reference frame; none is privileged (P9).
ex:officeSite a gmeow:Place ;
    gmeow:name "Blackcat office site"@en ;
    gmeow:placeType gmeow:placeTypeSite ;
    gmeow:containedInPlace ex:edmonton .

ex:surveyTeam a gmeow:Organization ;
    gmeow:name "Precision Survey Co."@en .

ex:officeGpsFix a gmeow:CoordinateObservation ;
    gmeow:coordinateObservationOf ex:officeSite ;
    gmeow:vantage ex:surveyTeam ;
    gmeow:observationMethod gmeow:methodGPS ;
    gmeow:coordinateResult ex:officeCoords ;
    gmeow:hasReferenceFrame gmeow:referenceFrameWGS84 ;
    gmeow:confidence 0.95 ;
    gmeow:assertedAt "2026-03-10T00:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime .

ex:officeCoords a gmeow:GeoCoordinates ;
    gmeow:latitude "53.5443"^^xsd:decimal ;
    gmeow:longitude "-113.4909"^^xsd:decimal ;
    gmeow:elevation "645.0"^^xsd:decimal .

Terms

Classes

Properties

Individuals

Linkages

• Rows: 369
• Projection profiles: bot, dcterms, foaf, geosparql, ivoa, oai_dc, schema-org, vcard
• External vocabularies: bfo, bot, brick, cora, cp, crm, crmarc, crmgeo, dc, dcterms, faldo, fibo-fnd-acc-cur, fibo-iso4217, foaf, geo, gn, gvp, ifc, iso19156, ivoa, knowrob, ladm, lgdo, lvont, mf, mrg, obscore, pleiades, pos, qudt, rdf, schema, sf, so, soma, sosa, sta, time, vcard, wd, wdt, wgs84, whg

Guide

Places — every locus names its frame

Slice: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/places · tier: core The Location-as-reference-frame engine: one frame discipline from latitude to chromosome, currency to C-space.

A coordinate without its frame is a bare number, and GMEOW forbids bare numbers (Principle 11). This slice carries that discipline to its logical end: the reference frame is the universal abstraction for "where". Geographic places, virtual venues, storage buckets, celestial positions, robot poses, latent embeddings, and biological-sequence loci are all positions in explicit gmeow:ReferenceFrames, distinguished by open realm, kind, and metric vocabularies rather than parallel class hierarchies. Granularity is a value, never a subclass: country, room, star, and SNP are all first-class, QID-bearing entities chained by containment.

Contested geography gets the standpoint treatment, not a dispute mechanism: a Crimea-class sovereignty conflict is two gmeow:accordingTo-annotated gmeow:containedInPlace statements; an endonym/exonym conflict is two co-equal place namings. There is no preferredJurisdiction and no primaryName — competing claims coexist, none privileged (Principle 9), and superseded ones are suppressed via gmeow:displayable false, never deleted (Principle 10). Everything computational — CIDR containment, calendar/assembly liftover, geodesic distance, transform-tree math, RCC8 closure — is solver-layer (Principle 12): the slice models structure, gmeow:frameSolver names the engine.

The location umbrella

gmeow:Location

The umbrella Kind: a locus where an entity can be situated, reside, or occur. Structural SubKinds exist only where the structure differs (network addresses vs coordinates vs storage paths); everything else is a type value.

gmeow:Place · gmeow:placeType

A geographic location at any granularity; the kind (country … room, ~600 GeoNames feature codes) is the open gmeow:placeType value, non-functional because multi-source classifications coexist as evidence.

gmeow:VirtualLocation · gmeow:StorageLocation

The online venue (video conference, website, metaverse room — open gmeow:virtualLocationType) and the byte locus (bucket, filesystem path, content-addressed store — gmeow:storageMedium, functional because the medium is constitutive). A storage device may sit at a geographic gmeow:physicalPlace; a virtual location has gmeow:accessUrl as its flat shortcut.

gmeow:CelestialLocation

Astronomical loci from spacecraft to galaxy cluster (gmeow:celestialObjectType), carrying gmeow:CelestialCoordinates (right ascension, declination, epoch) in explicit sky frames — ICRS, FK5, Galactic — per Principle 11.

gmeow:BiologicalSequenceLocation

biological-sequence design: a sequence feature (gene, exon, SNP, CDS) is a locus in a versioned reference assembly treated as a linear 1-D frame. It bears gmeow:SequenceCoordinates with explicit start, end, and strand; the kind is the open gmeow:sequenceFeatureType (aligned by reference to Sequence Ontology). FALDO positions map directly; liftover between assemblies is gmeow:transformsTo executed by an external solver (Principle 12).

The reference-frame engine (Principle 11)

gmeow:ReferenceFrame

The universal "where" abstraction: a system relative to which coordinates and measurements are expressed. Frames carry a gmeow:frameRealm, a gmeow:frameKind, a gmeow:hasMetricKind, and axes; they nest via gmeow:parentFrame and convert via gmeow:transformsTo. The slice ships ~60 seeded frames — gmeow:referenceFrameWGS84, referenceFrameICRS, referenceFrameGRCh38, referenceFrameInternet, referenceFrameSRGB, currencies, calendars — so most facts pick a frame rather than mint one.

gmeow:FrameRealm · gmeow:FrameKind · gmeow:MetricKind

Three open value vocabularies (Principle 9). The realm is the domain (gmeow:frameRealmTerrestrial, frameRealmCelestial, frameRealmVirtual, frameRealmMathematical, frameRealmRobotic, frameRealmBiological, and the gmeow:frameRealmNarrative the narrative extension builds on). The kind is the structure (geodetic, Cartesian, topological, linear-sequence). The metric is how distance is computed (gmeow:metricGeodesic, metricEuclidean, metricCosine, metricEditDistance, metricGraphHops) — the computation itself is solver-layer.

gmeow:SpatialCoordinates · gmeow:coordinateFrame · gmeow:Axis

A position in a frame. gmeow:coordinateFrame names that frame (a gmeow:requiresFrame warning fires on a frameless coordinate); gmeow:hasAxis enumerates the frame's gmeow:Axis individuals. The slice seeds ~150 axes (latitude, IPv6, valence, joint angles, sequence position). High-dimensional and ∞-D spaces use one axis plus a gmeow:hasCoordinateMatrix shape, not n axis individuals — the ontology carries structure, the solver carries cardinality (Principle 12).

The geographic 80% and its promotions

gmeow:hasCoordinates · gmeow:hasGeometry

Flat shortcuts to a point (gmeow:GeoCoordinates: gmeow:latitude/gmeow:longitude/ gmeow:elevation) and a shape (gmeow:Geometry: gmeow:asWKT/gmeow:asGeoJSON). Both are coarsenGuarded and resolve by property chain to the reified gmeow:CoordinateObservation (via gmeow:coordinateResult / gmeow:geometryResult), which carries provenance, frame, confidence, and standpoint when the bare value is not enough (Principle 3).

gmeow:containedInPlace · gmeow:Geocode

gmeow:containedInPlace is the transitive nesting spine (room ⊂ building ⊂ city ⊂ country), inverse gmeow:containsPlace; closure is solver work, not asserted triples. Alternative geocodes (geocoding design — Plus Code, what3words, geohash, MGRS, UN/LOCODE, mile-marker) are gmeow:Geocode strings in an explicit gmeow:geocodeFrame attached by gmeow:hasGeocode; conversion to WGS84 is solver-layer.

Time-scoped and contested situations

gmeow:JurisdictionTenure · gmeow:ContainmentTenure

The flat transitive containment is the 80% case; promote to these gmeow:TimeScopedRelation SubKinds (time-scoped place design) when period, standpoint, or contestation matters. Contested sovereignty is multiple co-existing, confidence-weighted, standpoint-indexed JurisdictionTenures, never a single winner (Principle 9). Both carry their interval via gmeow:duringInterval (temporal slice).

gmeow:RegulatoryOverlay · gmeow:overlayType

Legal overlays beyond sovereignty (regulatory-overlay design/vertical/maritime/aviation-zone design) — zoning, protected areas, restricted airspace, maritime and aviation zones, NOTAMs — as reified situations binding a place (gmeow:overlayPlace), an authority (gmeow:overlayAuthority), an open gmeow:overlayType, and an optional gmeow:overlayRegulation RightsStatement for the deontic rules. 3D bounds are frame-relative ScalarQuantities in explicit vertical frames; contested overlays coexist.

gmeow:LandTenure · gmeow:CadastralReference

The cadastral realm (cadastral design, LADM/INSPIRE): ownership, lease, easement, mortgage, usufruct as gmeow:LandTenure situations binding a place, a party, a rights statement, and an open gmeow:tenureType; structured identifiers (folio, title, lot, parcel ID) as gmeow:CadastralReference. Contested titles coexist; lapsed tenures keep their record with gmeow:displayable false (Principle 10).

Solver layer & alignment

The slice carries structure; the solver carries computation (Principle 12). The RCC-8 region relations (gmeow:rcc8dc … gmeow:rcc8eq) are pairwise-disjoint by axiom, but their exhaustiveness and composition are solver work; CIDR/DNS resolution, coordinate liftover, transitive closure, area and intersection math, and frame transforms all live below the OWL core. Alignment is by reference across a deliberate superset — schema.org, GeoSPARQL, GeoNames, Getty TGN, Wikidata, WGS84, BOT, ifcOWL, IVOA, UAT, SWEET, FALDO, Sequence Ontology, ISO 19152 LADM, INSPIRE — projected through profile mappings (SSSOM rows at the alignment window). GMEOW's addition is that every frame is first-class and self-describing rather than an opaque IRI.

Dependencies

Depends on kernel, coreference, documents, lifecycle, observations, rights, and temporal (tenure intervals). Consumed by every located fact — contacts, events, the mail corpus, jurisdiction tenures, the GeoSPARQL projection — and by the narrative extension, whose narrative frames live in the gmeow:frameRealmNarrative defined here.