DCAT 1.1 has these usage notes for dct:spatial:
The MDR Name Authority Lists must be used for continents, countries and places that are in those lists; if a particular location is not in one of the mentioned Named Authority Lists, Geonames URIs must be used.
An these are the DCAT 1.1 usage notes for dct:Location
A spatial region or named place. It can be represented using a controlled vocabulary or with geographic coordinates. In the latter case, the use of the Core Location Vocabulary is recommended, following the approach described in the GeoDCAT-AP specification.
That seems to be a contradiction within DCAT-AP 1.1: If either MDR or Geonames URIs must be used then CLV URIs seem to be excluded...
Copied from https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/ogd2_0/issue/geographic-extent#commen…
This also seems to be in contradiction with GeoDCAT 1.0 in section "Geographic bounding box - *Geographic location of the dataset".
Comments
Thanks Andreas for your comment.
As far as I can see there is no contradiction with GeoDCAT which actually refers to the use of locn:Location in DCAT-AP. GeoDCAT-AP just adds specific advice to the general mention of the Core Location Vocabulary in DCAT-AP.
The statements in DCAT-AP could maybe be formulated better: maybe like this:
"if a location is a named place, then the MDR or Geonames URI should be provided; if a location is not a named place, geographic coordinates should be provided according to the Core Location Vocabulary, i.e. using locn:geometry".
Does this help?
This issue is further discussed in light of the implementation guidelines for DCAT-AP. A new issue has been created via https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/discussion/contradiction-dctspatial-and-dctlocation