W3CThe W3C Basic Geo Vocabulary provides a minimal set of RDF properties for attaching geographic coordinates to resources using the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) datum. Despite its simplicity -- just a handful of properties for latitude, longitude, and altitude -- it has become one of the most widely used geospatial vocabularies in the linked data ecosystem, appearing in datasets from DBpedia and GeoNames to library catalogs and biodiversity databases.
Background
As the Semantic Web grew in the early 2000s, there was a practical need for a straightforward way to say "this thing is located at these coordinates." While comprehensive geospatial standards existed (notably those from OGC), they were far more complex than what most linked data publishers needed. In 2003, the W3C Semantic Web Interest Group created the Basic Geo vocabulary as a simple, immediately usable solution. It was explicitly designed to be minimal: just enough to record a point location using the WGS84 coordinate reference system, which is the same datum used by GPS.
Purpose & Scope
The vocabulary defines a single class and a small number of properties:
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
geo:SpatialThing |
Anything with a spatial extent or location |
geo:Point |
A subclass of SpatialThing representing a single geographic point |
geo:lat |
Latitude in decimal degrees (WGS84) |
geo:long |
Longitude in decimal degrees (WGS84) |
geo:alt |
Altitude in meters (WGS84) |
geo:location |
Links a resource to a Point |
This simplicity is both the vocabulary's greatest strength and its limitation. It handles the overwhelmingly common case of "where is this thing?" but does not support polygons, lines, coordinate reference system transformations, or other advanced geospatial operations. For those needs, GeoSPARQL and other OGC standards are more appropriate.
Governance & Maintenance
The vocabulary was created by the W3C Semantic Web Interest Group, which is no longer active. It has not received formal updates since its initial publication, but remains stable and functional. The namespace URI (http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#) continues to resolve. Because the vocabulary is so simple, there has been little pressure to revise it.
Notable Implementations
The Basic Geo vocabulary is used extensively across the linked data cloud. DBpedia uses it to express coordinates for geographic entities extracted from Wikipedia. GeoNames provides geo:lat and geo:long for its millions of place names. Library and cultural heritage linked data often use it for the locations of institutions, events, and subjects. The vocabulary is also commonly found in FOAF profiles and in biodiversity datasets for specimen collection locations.
Related Standards
- GeoSPARQL -- The OGC standard for representing and querying geospatial data in RDF, offering far richer geometry support
- Schema.org GeoCoordinates -- Schema.org's approach to the same problem, using
latitudeandlongitudeproperties