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Show HN: Free database of geographic place names and geospatial data
- aembleton 11y agoThis would have been useful if the railroads and roads actually had names attached to them.
- marco1 11y agoWe didn't get those from our sources but we'll love to add them!
- IanCal 11y agoLooks interesting, how would you compare it to GeoNames?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- marco1 11y agoAdmittedly, it's similar! But we wanted to include more data, other data, and just offer an alternative in general. Three things we definitely wanted were (1) complete boundaries, (2) easiest programmatic access and (3) efficient collaboration.
- Vespasian 11y agoSo this is bascially Natural Earth repacked as JSON, CSV and SQL? It's a nice start. I like it. Would it be possible to add the programm /instructions you used for converting the data from their original shape? I would love to see an additional SQL version for PostGIS and the likes so that I can use their a large number of spatial functions to work with this data.
- maze-le 11y agoIt seems to be the Natural Earth Dataset -- I think the 1:50m-resolution, but with a slightly reduced set of properties (columns). I haven't tried it, but from the looks of it, the sql-files should work with PostGIS as they are.
- maze-le 11y agoActually, according to the resource-file is isn't Natural Earth after all. The column-names almost fit the NE-Datasaet though...
- anc84 11y agoThe SOURCE.md file only lists Natural Earth.
- Vespasian 11y agoFor what I've seen the data type of the columns is always varchar and not geometry. Not a big issues merely it's more convenient otherwise ;)
- marco1 11y agoWe should definitely fix this in the future! Thank you :)
- marco1 11y agoYou're right! Please see the "SOURCE.md" file for all necessary information. Sorry for not linking this file in a prominent place!
- jerrysievert 11y agounfortunately, while it is in JSON, it is not in GEOJSON, nor anything that appears to be standard. at least the points are in WKT, so should be able to be converted into something useful.
- marco1 11y agoThank you! We'll love to hear and discuss what's the best way to represent and store the data. We're open to changes between GeoJSON, WKT, etc.
- funkysquid 11y agoLooks like they include instructions on how to build in SOURCE.md (https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/blob/master/SOURCE.md https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/blob/master/SOURCE.m...) - would be great to have that linked in the README though.
- marco1 11y agoThanks! We'll have to add a link to the README, you're right!
- marco1 11y agoExactly! Thanks. Although to some it may be "just Natural Earth", we thought it could be useful. JSON, CSV and SQL should be more helpful than the original shape files when building (web and mobile) applications. We'll love to extend the data to make it ready for PostGIS etc. Will be useful!
- rmc 11y ago"RESOURCES.md" ( https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/blob/master/RESOURCES.md https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/blob/master/RESOURCE... ) includes OpenStreetMap, which is licenced under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). You cannot relicence it under the Apache licence. I've raised an issue ( https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/issues/1 https://github.com/delight-im/FreeGeoDB/issues/1 )
- maze-le 11y agoWhat if you make extracts, reprojections or create a new dataset from a ODbL-Licensed resources (or even more Licenses, depending on the number of datasets you use to create a new one), can you relicense it then?
- Doctor_Fegg 11y agoThis is known as a "Derivative Database" and so ODbL still applies. It's a classic share-alike/copyleft licence, with the wrinkle that it has to use copyright, database rights, and contract law because database protection varies across legislations. See http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ .
- rmc 11y ago> It's a classic share-alike/copyleft licence A big difference from a CC-SA licence is that it is possible to make a produced work from OSM data and all you have to do is attribute OSM, there is no share-alike requirement. In this way, the OSM ODbL is less restrictive than a standard share-alike licence. The main example of that is making a map image. You can make a map image from 100% OSM data, and that image doesn't have to be share-alike. If you create a database as is the case of FreeGeoDB (and perhaps if you use OSM to geocode another database), then share-alike applies.
- jumperjake 11y agoI don't understand. If I produce a map image with all the details I'm interested in, and publish it, then use opencv to extract the data from that image into a database, would I be free to license the resulting database as a I wish?
- legulere 11y agoApache seems a strange license for data. Why not CC-0 like for instance wikidata?
- marco1 11y agoThank you! We know that Apache, MIT, etc. are usually for code and the Creative Commons licenses are for content (e.g. writing, images). We thought that the data sets (CSV, JSON, SQL) are rather in the intersection of code and content, so the Apache license would be okay. Is there anything specifically wrong with the Apache license for this type of project? We couldn't find any tangible downsides but we'd love to hear about any pros and cons.
- pki 11y agodata sets are simply that - data - content your code would be the scripts you write to process it, and your content would be your data in my opinion
- Quai 11y agoFirst three norwegian cities I looked up was given the wrong name. (Plesund (should be Ålesund), Bodi (Bodø) and Tdnsberg (Tønsberg)). So, I think it is safe to say that there are encoding issues in the data set.
- bhaak 11y agoThere's definitely something wrong. Looking at the SQL file, "Zürich" is listed as "Zdrich", Munich is only shown as "Munich" without the German name "München" anywhere, and Cologne is listed as "Cologne" with the wrong "Koln" as alternative name. Doesn't look like a reliable data source.
- seszett 11y agoFrench names have the same problem, with "La Réunion" being shown as "La Rcunion" and "Rhône-Alpes" as "RhAne-Alpes". It's strange, I can't really understand how these accents can get mangled as these particular single letters.
- vcarl 11y agoAlmost looks like OCR errors, especially Rhône -> RhAne.
- bhaak 11y agoI don't think that the reason are OCR errors. It's too consistent for that. I think I also have seen such character set corruptions before, but I can't remember how exactly you can get these particular corruptions.
- marco1 11y agoThey're not OCR errors, unfortunately. Sorry for these problems! We have to investigate!
- maze-le 11y agoIt's 2015 and we still have UTF-8 problems... sigh
- krick 11y agoThere are free airport lists that are much more complete. Also, two columns (lon, lat) for points would be better, as it's much easier to transform "lon, lat" into "POINT(lon lat)" than otherwise. And, yeah, although I don't really care for licenses usually, here it makes me feel uneasy.
- marco1 11y agoThank you! What makes you feel uneasy about the license? We'll love to fix this! Regarding the airport lists, we're definitely open to merging in more complete and accurate data.
- electriclove 11y agoHow will this be kept up-to-date?
- spacemanmatt 11y agoYeah, a quick perusal (VERY quick) revealed no provenance, maintenance, or currency information. There's a lot more to data than a snapshot of some tables.
- marco1 11y agoThanks for reminding us of the importance of efficient updates! As outlined in "SOURCE.md", one part of the update process should be to continuously compare to the latest Natural Earth data. Apart from that, we're totally open to contributions and ideas from the community!
- vezzoni 11y agocongratz, nice job! really interesting and helpful. I'll try to use it. nowadays I am using sollo atlas (which is used by the http://www.findmyninja.io http://www.findmyninja.io): http://atlas.sollo.io/atlas/api http://atlas.sollo.io/atlas/api it's possible to easily navigate through resources (places data) and, a helpful feature is its capacity to have synonyms.
- Crocode 11y agoThe data like these are available for free (and updated by community!) for years. See http://www.geonames.org/ http://www.geonames.org/ Numerous website use the Geonames dataset foe there work. (I also partisipated in this madness: http://www.wemakemaps.com/ http://www.wemakemaps.com/)
- datamongers 11y agoI've not see http://www.wemakemaps.com/ http://www.wemakemaps.com/ before, looks like a cool site, but whats with consistently referring to OpenStreetMap as OpenMap? and how about adding proper attribution on the OSM maps?
- mileszim 11y agoCool! Do you have any plans to track historical changes of geospacial areas? What reference frame are you using for labeling areas? (places America considers countries vs what China considers, for example)
- marco1 11y agoThanks! Tracking historical changes is a great idea, but this requires perfect data from day one, doesn't it? Otherwise, how will you differentiate between historic changes and mere factual/technical corrections? Thus, right now, there are no plans to track this. But we're open to ideas and contributions on how to do this. Regarding the reference frame, that's definitely an issue. Right now, it follows the souce's guidelines (see "SOURCE.md"), which means "boundaries of sovereign states according to defacto status. We show who actually controls the situation on the ground. For instance, we show China and Taiwan as two separate states. But we show Palestine as part of Israel."