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

Mikel Maron mikel_maron at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 1 10:28:52 GMT 2006


http://www.geonames.org/ is doing some of this. They've compiled several public domain gazateers, including the GNS database. Smacked a search and web service interface on the front. And it's all editable, wiki style.

----- Original Message ----
From: Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>
To: talk at openstreetmap.org
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 8:43:39 PM
Subject: [OSM-talk] Geographic names and lat/long pairs

          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?
 
 ~ESP
 
    -- 
 Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>    _______________________________________________
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