GeoNames is a geographic database accessible through various web services under a Creative Commons license . One of the largest and most widely used geodatabases in terms of names and coordinates of various places [1] .
Content
Database and Web Services
The GeoNames database contains over 10 million geographical names and information about more than 7.5 million of their unique characteristics [2] . Among the characteristics: names of places in different languages, latitude, longitude, altitude. [3] All these characteristics are divided into categories, so that each characteristic of a geographical object belongs to one of nine classes. And each of these categories, in turn, is divided into subcategories, the total number of which is 645. In addition to names in various languages, geographic coordinates, altitude, population, administrative division and postal codes are stored. Geographic coordinates are recorded in WGS 84 .
All this data is available for free through a number of web services and daily export of the database [4] . These web services include direct and reverse geocoding , locating locations by zip code, locating toponyms near a specified location, and locating Wikipedia articles on toponyms. Automated API via REST protocol allows to execute up to 2 thousand requests per hour and up to 30 thousand per day [5] .
For 2013-2014, GeoNames additionally added 35 thousand records on historical names [6] .
Wiki Interface
The core of the GeoNames database is represented by public sources, the quality of which can change over time. Through the wiki interface, editors can edit and improve the database by adding or correcting names of toponyms, changing the characteristics of geographical objects, adding new objects and the like.
Semantic Web Integration
Each characteristic of the toponym stored in the database is a web resource defined by a stable URI . This URI provides access through the content matching mechanism , either to an HTML page in a wiki format, or to a description of this characteristic in RDF format using elements of the GeoNames ontology [7] . This ontology describes the characteristics properties of GeoNames using the declarative programming language Web Ontology Language , and the categories of characteristics and codes are described in SKOS . Through the URL of Wikipedia articles related to RDF descriptions, GeoNames data is linked to DBpedia encyclopedia data and other related RDF data .
Data Sources
Among the most important data sources, the project names [8] :
- nga (NGA GEOnet) [9] , a project by the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and data from the US Board on Geographic Names [10]
- gnis (US Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System) - United States Geographic Names Information System
- Open data from British Ordnance Survey , contains data of the Crown, Open Government, Royal Mail
- Canadian GeoBase from Canadian Council on Geomatics
- USGS gtopo30 elevation data
Additionally, several hundred databases are used, including Wikidata . [11] [12] [13]
See also
- LinkedOpenData
Notes
- ↑ Ahlers, Dirk. Assessment of the Accuracy of GeoNames Gazetteer Data . Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Geographic Information Retrieval. . ACM (2013). Date of treatment November 26, 2017.
- ↑ GeoNames web site . Geonames.org. Date of treatment December 15, 2013.
- ↑ Enzo Maltese; Feroz Farazi. A SEMANTIC SCHEMA FOR GEONAMES . INSPIRE Conference (June 25th 2013). Date of treatment November 26, 2017.
- ↑ GeoNames web services . Geonames.org. Date of treatment December 15, 2013.
- ↑ Smetanin S.I. The program for monitoring public sentiment in Russia based on messages from Twitter (English) . Proceedings of ISP RAS, vol. 29, no. 4 315-324 (2017). Date of treatment November 26, 2017.
- ↑ Historical Gazetteer System Integration: CHGIS, Regnum Francorum, and GeoNames (Jul 24, 2014). Date of treatment November 26, 2017.
- ↑ GeoNames ontology . Geonames.org. Date of treatment December 15, 2013.
- ↑ About GeoNames
- ↑ http://geonames.nga.mil/gns/html/index.html
- ↑ US Board on Geographic Names (BGN)
- ↑ GeoNames Datasources
- ↑ GeoNames
- ↑ GeoNames Postal Codes
Links
- https://techcrunch.com/2007/05/26/geonames-wikipedia-for-geographical-data/
- https://www.programmableweb.com/news/123-database-apis-geonames-freebase-and-yahoo-query-language/2012/05/23
- https://books.google.com/books?id=x3XMB2sKF3MC&pg=PA173 isbn 9783642032943 2009 p.173
- Marc Wick, Chapter 10 - Working with geonames.org , UNGEGN