GeoNames Forum

I've been looking at the data for my location in Australia and there seems to be inconsistencies in how the locations below State are defined, especially in terms of populated place, section of populated place, country state region.

For example Country:Australia, State:Victoria, Banyule is a 2nd order admin division but the areas within it are sometimes a populated place and sometimes a section of a pop place. It's the same for other 2nd order places such as Boroondara and Darebin.

Are there any guides to how the appropriate tags for each sub level are determined?

Hi Ibex

Admin divisions and populated places are two different kind of features. They also have different feature classes A vs P.
The admin division is reflecting an administrative function of an entity whereas the populated place is a geographical feature, the group of buildings seen on an aerial image. Sometimes it is difficult to determine where a location is PPL or PPLX (section). The PPL is the entire built-up area whereas the PPLX is a part of it. In the real world is is not always clear where a ppl ends and another begins, whether one is a section of the other or not.
And more important, we rely a lot on data feeds from national mapping agencies, statistical offices, postal services etc and they too have all their own definitions and classification systems. To unify this globally leads to inconsistencies, which are getting fewer and fewer as we are constantly improving.

Best Regards

Marc

Thanks Marc.

In the examples I've been looking at it seems like each of the areas that are marked PPL or PPLX are equivalent in that they are a distinct locally named area with its own discrete postal delivery code. I don't think anyone locally would distinguish the ones marked PPL from those marked PPLX.

I guess there's other people in Australia much better placed than me to suggest changes to the coding.