GeoNames Forum

Hello,

I have a similar question / problem that I hope you can help me with:

I have downloaded the CA.zip file to study the data and see if Geonames has what I need, and I can't figure out if this releationship exists in the data (for example):

Canada --> British Columbia --> Vancouver Island --> Victoria

I'm looking for a heirarchy of Country --> Province --> Sub Region/Territory (for lack of a better term) --> City

I can make the releationship work for Country, Province and City, but adding in the extra layer is the trick I need.

The data records for this example are:

5909050 British Columbia
6173336 Vancouver Island
6174041 Victoria

This is just one example, and with all the global data available, I'm hoping this could be a feature for any ADM1 and Populated Place (if I properly understood the relationship)?

I'm not after a webservice, just need an understanding of the data relationship and I can write the query to make it work.

If this is not possible, where can I turn to find what I'm after?

Thank you very much for the help!

Cheers.

Michael.

I don't see any documentation on this service anywhere on the site. Has it been "officially released"?

I plan on using this service for my project and was lucky to stumble upon it in the forums. I think it would help others if there was documentation about it on the main site.

I have a question about the consistency of results from this service.

Will the second result always be something that is considered a "country"?

Take Puerto Rico for example: http://ws.geonames.org/hierarchy?geonameId=4566967&style=full

It is considered an island by geonames, but for all intents and purposes, it is it's own country.

I need to know if I can safely assume that the second result is always a country.

Thanks.

One more question about the structure of results returned by hierarchy.

Will there ever be something two levels below ADM1 in the hierarchy.

Here is how I understand the structure:

1) Continent
2) Country
3) ADM1
4) ADM2 (sometimes non-existent)
5) populated place/building/structure/etc.
6) ???? Does anything ever exist here?

Thanks again!

I think through some research, I answered my last question. The answer seems to be "no", but I'm not sure why.

Here is something that should be in #6 of my previous post:
http://ws.geonames.org/hierarchy?geonameId=5744256&style=full

It jumps straight from ADM2 down to a specific building, but I think a populated place should be between those two. Here is how I found the proper populated place:
http://ws.geonames.org/findNearbyPlaceName?lat=45.3567875&lng=-122.5962024

I have coded around this in my application, but I think it makes sense to have it actually be part of the service.

Hi tk147

For Canada we have the province level information (British Columbia) in column 'admin1code'. The information for lower levels is not yet included in the database.

eyeRmonkey :

I have updated the feature code for Puerto Rico to 'dependent political entity' it will soon show as second result item.

The information is not yet as complete for low level information like suburbs and neighbourhoods. See also this discussion about New York :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/487.page

Marc

Thanks Marc!

That makes sense. Hopefully that information will become more complete in time.

How about some documentation for hierarchy on the main website so others can enjoy it's greatness?

Thanks a ton for the work you're doing here. It's extremely helpful. The hierarchy service was exactly what I needed for my project. The geonames project is fantastic!