It is some effort to deal with as there are many locations
with multiple names
Look for the UFI and UNI columns, they are unique ID's for a place and name,
even though there may be multiple entries in the file. All entries with the
same UFI should in fact be the same place. I've noticed (at least in the UK)
that there are multiple (different) places with the same lat/long. (The
accuracy of the lat/long data seems roughly within 2km, as its only quoted
to the nearest minute.)
Anyway - if anyone has clarification of the 'freeness' of this data,
I'd be interested
to hear about it.
Quote from http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/
---
There are no licensing requirements or restrictions in place for the
use of the GNS data
---
Which is good! One small point is that GNS doesn't cover the US, that's
available separately, at the first link you quoted.
Hope that helps,
Barry Hunter
PS this is my first post here, so hello to all!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Hurst" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 11:00 PM
Subject: Re: [backstage] World Coordinates - Finally Available.
I'm curious about the availability of this data. I have been using what I
guess is siimlar data found from starting out at
http://geonames.usgs.gov/
and to save you all the navigation (though it is worth it as there is lots
of
data here), grab the file from
http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/cntry_files.html
(i.e. the single compressed file)
which as far as I can tell is still freely available and what is more,
maintained. It is some effort to deal with as there are many locations
with multiple names (you need to test for equality of coordinates to
determine that Tokyo is another name for Edo for example).
It has 5MM lines in it, of which about 3MM are populated places (PPL
designations).
Is this basically the same data?
I've been working on an in memory representation of this data with the
goal
of being able to serve as a knowledge resource for location understanding
in text as well as for the general task of looking up places near to some
position.
Anyway - if anyone has clarification of the 'freeness' of this data,
I'd be interested
to hear about it.
Matt Hurst
Senior Research Scientist
Intelliseek, Inc,
BlogPulse: www.blogpulse.com
On 5/25/05, David Tattersall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi,
This looks like a very good find - a possible future idea could be
getting
bbc's forecasts and placing the appropriate weather symbols on a google
map
(for those who can't quite get the new 3d maps!)
If the bbc's RSS feed doesn't include lat/long (although the weather web
site does so perhaps the database isn't needed) then this set of figures
could come in useful.
ps - new here :) I love the idea behind this. Keep up the good work.
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kosso
Sent: 25 May 2005 4:09
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [backstage] World Coordinates - Finally Available.
i'll get this lot into a MySqldb later;)
good find!!
On 5/25/05, Therion Ware <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> - Finally there. The database of all world cities can be found at:
>
> http://video.s-vid.com/~admin/geog/world.zip
>
> The file is in CSV format, of the form:
>
> iName cName CityName AdminDistrict LatLong
> Africa / Middle East Tanzania Musasa Tanzania
(General)
> 003:21:00S031:33:00E
>
> About 24Mb. Unzips to about 193Mb.
>
> And includes the United States, which after much looking around, I
> found - would that it were so easy to loose in real life...!
>
> There's 2,410,343 entries, and it's only population centres. There's
> another 2 million or so sea mounts, geographical features and so on
> omitted. If you really need these, let me know, and I'll see.
>
> I was thinking of setting up a MySQL backend that allows an HTTP
> request where you specify a lat and long, and get back the nearest
> place. If that'd be of use let me know here.
>
> As I originally said, I got the data free from the US geographical
> survey back when they didn't charge for these things. What's amusing
> is that Vietnam constitutes a unique region (Col 1). Presumably that
> reflects the spirit of the them times to us today through inertia!
>
> Oh - another thing: projecting these coordinates on to a graphic map
> is *not* a trivial thing for lots of different reasons. Spherical
> coordinates in relation to your map image and all that...
>
> Anyway, have fun, and sniff, if you use them, think about crediting me
> as in www.video2cd.co.uk as the source seeing as these days it'd cost
> you money to get them!
>
> Best,
> TW
>
>
> --
> www.video2cd.co.uk <--- blatant self publicity
> and unsubtle effort to flog stuff...
>
>
>
