[OSM-talk] Geographic names and lat/long pairs

[Barry Hunter]

>
> So, the eerily-named National Geographic Intelligence Agency (NGIS) of
> the United States has a huge database of geographic names and lat/long
> pairs, updated monthly, available for download online:
>
> http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html
>
> Being the product of a US government agency, the data is in the public
> domain and free for any use.
>
> It doesn't cover the United States -- for bureaucratic reasons, that
> stuff is covered by another agency. US data can be downloaded here:
>
> http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/index.html
>
> Of course, the files are in different format. I guess we should all be
> grateful that you don't have to buy reel-to-reel tapes by mail order.
>
> Now, that all said: this seems like valuable information that could be
> useful for OpenStreetMaps. Is there a way that this could/should be
> uploaded to the OSM server? Kept up-to-date on a monthly basis, without
> overwriting local modifications?  There are several million data
> points, and a non-trivial number of them are synonyms. How would that
> work?

There is a second id column that is the same for all the synonums (well 
thats the theory) so you can deal with that.

However the data isnt all that accurate , the reason for this is the 
lat/long is only to the nearest minute.

I guess this is less of a problem with bigger cities,  but for smaller 
places, the 'point' can be the other side of another village :(