GeoNames Forum

Hello,

numerous towns/villages in Switzerland are flagged as adm3 (communes) only. The associated PPL don't exist in the database. Ex: Carrouge.

In general, when looking at the swiss map, there are more administrative divisions than populated places, which is quite weird...

Regards

The problem is that we don't know the populated places in a adm3. The Swiss National Mapping Agency 'swisstopo' has a free offering of their product 'swissnames':
http://www.toposhop.admin.ch/en/shop/products/landscape/names/index

Unfortunately it only includes 18004 records. The adm3 Carrouge is included but the populated place is missing.

Out of those 18004 toponyms only 7799 are from Switzerland:
7799 CH
4033 FR
3619 IT
1824 DE
729 AT

There is a commercial product with far more rows, but I don't think we would be allowed to use it even if we buy it.

We could instead use the official postal code data for the populated places. I will have a look at it.

Best

Marc

Thanks Marc!

It would be a useful addition!

I made a quick search about the postal codes database. The one distributed by the swiss post office isn't free and has some restrictive licence. I couldn't find anything else with a sufficient level of details.

Have you been luckier than me?

Best

There is a postal code dataset provided by the postal office, it does not include any lat/lng:
https://match.postmail.ch/match_zip
I don't see any license for it.

There is another dataset with lat/lng provided by the national survey agency:
http://www.cadastre.ch/internet/cadastre/de/home/products/plz/data.html
It has some kind of attribution license. "Der Datensatz darf frei verwendet werden. Bei kommerzieller Anwendung verlangen wir eine Quell-angabe «Amtliche Vermessung Schweiz / swisstopo»."

Marc

I saw this dataset, which isn't free : http://www.post.ch/post-startseite/post-geschaeftskunden/post-direct-marketing/post-direct-marketing-national/post-direct-marketing-adressen/post-direct-marketing-geopost/post-direct-marketing-geopost-zipcodes-geo.htm

But the one you found (cadastre.ch) seems excellent! The french version insists on the free use of the data (red font in the source):

Le jeu de données peut être utilisé sans aucune restriction. En cas d'utilisation commerciale, nous exigeons une indication de source «Mensuration Officielle Suisse / swisstopo».

It should be sufficient to add a line in the data sources page on geonames (I guess)

Best