This month we have an interview with Marc Wick of GeoNames. We have been using GeoNames for a while, and have recently became one of its sponsors.
Hi Marc. Can you tell our readers little bit about GeoNames?
GeoNames is a global database of geographic entities that can be downloaded free of charge. The database contains 7.5 million entries - places such as cities, provinces, mountains, lakes, islands, postal codes, etc.
All entries have geographic coordinates and if available, other attributes such as population, elevation, administrative status, place name in different languages, or the time zone.
How did GeoNames came about? How many people work on the service today?
The idea for GeoNames came about from a project that tried to plot locations of holiday homes on a map.
While working on this project, we have noted that geographic data is available in many countries, but only under commercial terms and at very high prices, with little or no low-cost alternatives. GeoNames, by contrast, gathers freely available data from around the world and places them within a single global data structure.
Today as many as 10,000 people work on GeoNames on a voluntary basis. About 60 of those are so-called “ambassadors” - users responsible for GeoNames efforts within their respective country.
How do you ensure that the information in your database is correct? Is the information based mainly on contribution of local users or does GeoNames rely on other sources as well?
We mainly look for country-specific, or theme-specific datasets. These are then integrated into our global database.
An increasing number of governments around the world acknowledge that it is their task to make geographic datasets publicly available.
This year England and Switzerland have taken a big step forward and opened up free access to many datasets that were up until recently available only under commercial terms. Unfortunately Germany is lagging behind, most of the data relating to Germany within GeoNames originates from the U.S. Army.
The importance of the accessible geographic data was highlighted by the recent incident between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Navigation systems rely on geodata as well and traffic in cities could flow more freely and more efficiently if the authorities provided access to the relevant data. In fact this is as crucial for the transport sector today as putting up traffic signs.
Who uses GeoNames?
The spectrum of users ranges from large companies like Microsoft and Apple to countless small companies and projects. Applications are often found in tourism, real estate, jobs or media industries. We have also noticed a strong increase in smart phone applications, particularly since the advent of the current generation of smartphones, almost all of which are GPS-enabled.
Thank you for the interview and good luck with GeoNames!
