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human-ancestry-ontology-design-patterns

HANCESTRO design patterns

HANCESTRO native object properties

HANCESTRO defines 4 native object properties:

  • hasAncestryStatus (HANCESTRO:0301)
  • hasCountryOfOrigin (HANCESTRO:0308)
  • isDemonymOf (HANCESTRO:0330)
  • hasDemonym (HANCESTRO:0329)

In addition, it uses several imported properties:

  • has quality (RO:0000086)
  • located in (RO:0001025)
  • part of (BFO:0000050)

Defined classes

Ancestry status

ancestry status is defined as being equivalent to genetically isolated ancestry or admixed ancestry. It is a grouping class for population genetics qualifiers.

Ethnicity category

ethnicity categoryis defined as being equivalent to has quality some ethnicity descriptor. This means that any subclass of ethnicity category has an inherent quality of being a descriptor of type ethnicity.

Geographic category

geographic categoryis defined as being equivalent to (isDemonymOf some Country) or (has quality some geographic descriptor). This means that any subclass of geographic category is either directly identified as a denomym of a country identified in the ontology or it has an inherent quality of being a descriptor of type geography.

Other design patterns

Where possible, we create a link between each country and the sub-continental region it is part of using the pattern

located in only <region>

Where a country spans multiple regions, we aim to list all of them. The reason for this axiomatisation is to enable queries by region, such as "Give me all countries located in Eastern Asia".

We acknowledge that the use of only in OWL axioms is not optimal and are actively looking into alternative design patterns.

For similar reasons as for the country-region links, we also create a link between each the sub-continental region and the continent it is part of using the pattern

part of only <continent>

We again acknowledge that the use of only in OWL axioms is not optimal and are actively looking into alternative design patterns.

As mentioned in the section on defined classes, we create links between geographic population descriptors for countries and the country they are associated with using the pattern

isDemonymOf some <country>

Country of origin

In exceptional cases, ancestry categories are associated with countries via the hasCountryOfOrigin relationship. This is a fairly formal definition generally reserved for genetically isolated populations where objectively verifiable information is available to relate individuals from this population to a small geographic area within a certain country. We do not use