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Geonames
Geonames is an open source database of geographical names and associated information such as population and elevation.
Contents |
Product
Geonames contains over eight million geographical names for 7.5 million unique features worldwide, with 2.8 million populated places.
Users can tag a location on the map giving it coordinates and then input a new name and categorise it. Features are categorized into one of nine feature classes and further subcategorized out of 645 feature codes. These locations are then searchable and displayed on a zoomable slippy map. The project has 'ambassadors' in many countries around the world.[1]
Data sets are available for download and all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
History
The project was running by February 2006[2] In February 2012, Geonames changed its elevation data provider to CGIAR, from the unprocessed SRTM data from NASA.[3]
Impact
Tim Berners Lee commented: This is a tremendous set of data you have.'[1]
