Locations¶

The Organization Ontology represents locations as places on the earth. The following entities have locations:

continents
countries. Including disputed countries 1.
regions of countries. These may have many different names based on the local jurisdiction, such as territory, state, region, province, or even “kingdom” in the case of the United Kingdom.
populated places, which may be cities 2. These need not be legally recognized, merely recognized by people outside the populated place.
facilities

Properties of Locations¶

located in. The Louvre is located in Paris. Paris is located in France. Metropolitan France is located in Europe.
has geographic representation – a text string of latitude and longitude of (hopefully) the centroid of the location. For example, Paris has geographical representation “48.864716,2.349014” Note there are no compass designations (E, W, N. S) in the representation. A negative latitude is south of the equator, a positive latitude is north of the equator. A negative longitude is east of the prime meridian,a positive longitude is west of the prime meridian.

Relations of Locations to Organizations and Facilities¶

Organizations occupy locations. They are not “located in” locations for two reasons:

Organizations are not material. Only material things have locations. An Organization such as a chess club may meet in a variety of locations, but they are not located in a location. An organization such as Amazon has a presence in many locations.
“located in” means all of something located wholly within something else.

Organizations occupy locations. This means they have some legal right to the location (own, lease, title, other) or they have one or more persons affiliated with the organization who is at the location (all or some of the time). While occupation may involve disputes, most do not.

We can then say

The University of Florida 'occupies' The University of Florida Gainesville campus
The University of Florida Gainesville campus 'is located in' Gainesville
The University of Florida Gainesville campus 'has geolocation representation' "29.6436325,-82.3571242"

Note that ‘located in’ is transitive. Gainesville is located in Florida. Florida is located in the United States. We can infer that the University of Florida campus is located in the United States.

Organizations do not have locations. Facilities, and buildings have locations. Campuses have locations.

Table 15 Terms used to represent locations lists terms used in the representation of locations

Table 15 Terms used to represent locations¶
Term	Notes
ORG_0000040 - architectural structure	A man-made construction attached to the ground, a bauwerk
ORG_0000041 - campus	The grounds of a business, university, or other
ORG_0000042 - facility	An architectural structure with a function
ORG_0000043 - building	A permanent walled and roofed construction
ORG_0000044 - room	A space delineated by partitions in a building
ORG_0000047 - continent	One of the seven major land masses of the earth
ORG_0000048 - country	The territory occupied by a sovereign state
ORG_0000049 - region	Any subdivision of the territory of a country
ORG_0000050 - populated place	Any named place on the earth occupied by people
ORG_2000002 - has occurent part	The relation indicating an organization occupies a location
RO_0001015 - location of	Location of
RO_0001025 - located in	Located in
ORG_0000045 - geographic region	A geographical location on the earth
ORG_0000046 - geographic point	A point on the earth
ORG_3000004 - has geolocation representation	A geolocation representation as lat,long

Footnotes

1: definition of “countries” is a matter of dispute and controversy. Any list of countries is subject to dispute.
2: A city often means a governed place, or the government of the place, “The City of New York” For our purposes we do not distinguish between city, town, village or other possibly formal, legal designations.