Mark,
A few suggestions to add to others' comments:
Wikipedia: You could try grabbing data from DBPedia
(http://dbpedia.org/) the linked data version of Wikipedia - this should
be much much easier to use programmatically than the regular Wikipedia.
I also thought you might find a couple of projects based here at EDINA
interesting primarily Unlock (http://unlock.edina.ac.uk/index.html)
which has a RESTful service for extracting locations from text
(http://unlock.edina.ac.uk/text.html) which might be useful depending on
the type of data you are using. If you are working from an academic
organisation there is also a gazeteer service that would be useful - I
think it's well worth a look even if not quite right for this problem.
The other project I thought might be of interest, though it's not yet
launched, will be providing historic post office directory data
(initially for three Edinburgh directories) via an open API. The project
is called AddressingHistory and there is more info on our blog
(http://addressinghistory.blogs.edina.ac.uk/) but I'm happy to email
anyone who's interested or post to the list once the site and API launch
with more info.
Thanks,
Nicola.
[long time lurker, first time poster!]
--
Nicola Osborne
EDINA Social Media Officer
AddressingHistory Project Officer
EDINA website:
http://www.edina.ac.uk/
t: 0131 651 3873
e: [email protected]
a: EDINA/Data Library Services for University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, Main Library Building,
George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LJ
On 19:59, Mark Goodge wrote:
I'm currently building an application which will need to use reverse
geocoding - that is, starting with geographic location data and/or
postcodes and returning a human-readable placename. There are several
ways of doing that, via both downloadable datasets of APIs, but none
of them seem to address a particular issue I have, which is that I
need to know the type of location and return the appropriate level of
placename. That is, for locations in rural areas and villages, I want
the village or hamlet name, but for locations in towns or cities I
want the town/city name rather than the district within it.
To give a couple of examples using postcodes of locations close to me,
I want WR11 8TJ to return South Littleton (as it's a village) rather
than Evesham (the post town), but WR11 3DL to return Evesham (since
it's in Evesham) rather than Bengeworth (the district within Evesham).
Getting a full address which is in the form of "South Littleton,
Evesham" or "Bengeworth, Evesham" is easy enough, but without local
knowledge of every town and village in the UK I can't know which part
of the address is the most relevant.
Does that make sense? If so, does anyone have any suggestions?
Mark
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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