do we need GAZ?

[mellybelly]

I don't understand why we need an ontology for this when other standards like geonames already exist. I view it more like the issues with making gene names available for axioms.

[diatomsRcool]

I don't know enough about GAZ to have an opinion, but I've been using geonames.

[cmungall]

see

• Determine who is using GAZ and how it is being used #22 determine who is using GAZ, what their requirements are
• Evaluate coverage of GAZ with respect to other resources #32 evaluate GAZ coverage
• Upload all of GAZ to wikidata #3 upload GAZ to Wikidata, and use Wikidata as canonical instance source

[mellybelly]

here are some other resources: https://researchguides.uoregon.edu/geocoding/placename

[cmungall]

I would use Wikidata

• CC-0 license
• accessible via SPARQL as well as downloads
• rich spatial queries supported
• rich interlinked data with each entry forming a massive KG
• location instances are types using an ontology which we are mapping to ENVO -- https://github.com/cmungall/environments2wikidata
• 100,00s of entries in wikidata that are not in geonames (AFAICT)