GTDO-CIDOC: A CIDOC CRM-Compatible Ontological Model for Analysing Tourism Dependence, Cultural Heritage and Geopolitical Interpretation

Tourism is both an economic activity and a cultural–political relation. When host economies rely heavily on visitors from specific origin countries, tourism can create measurable dependence while also carrying symbolic, cultural and potentially geopolitical effects. This paper presents the Geopolitical and Tourism Dependence Ontology (GTDO-CIDOC), a proof-of-concept, CIDOC conceptual reference model (CIDOC CRM)-compatible model built on CIDOC CRM and CRMgeo for representing tourism flows, indicators, dependence relations, asymmetry and evidence-linked influence hypotheses. Methodologically, the framework models aggregate tourism-flow records as information objects, represents indicators as CRM-compatible measurements and dimensions, computes a prototype Tourism Dependence Index (TDI) from normalised origin-market and host-exposure components, classifies dependence through explicit threshold rules, and tests the resulting graph through SHACL validation, SPARQL competency queries and a small Germany/Cyprus-to-Greece worked example. The model distinguishes individual tourism events from aggregate tourism-flow records and aligns tourism dependence with actors, information objects, places, time-spans and measurements already used in cultural heritage documentation. In this way, GTDO-CIDOC supports queryable, provenance-aware analysis of tourism dependence within cultural heritage knowledge graphs while treating geopolitical interpretation as a cautious, evidence-linked analytical claim rather than a direct causal conclusion.