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marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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We have changed the administrative division of the UK and have included the 'countries' England,Scottland, Wales and Northern Ireland as first level administrative division ADM1. All other divisions were moved down one level.

ADM1 : countries (4)
ADM2 : counties, metropolitan districts, unitary-authorities, greater london
ADM3 : districts / parishes in region without districts
ADM4 : parishes in districts

The publictag attribute helps distinguish between the type of admin divisions.

The administrative hiearchy in the UK is rather complex. See also this blog posting :
http://geonames.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/ordnance-survey-administrative-divisons/

The GORs are not included in the GeoNames admin hiearchy for the UK. We will find an other way to model this relationship between admininstative divisions.



Update May 2010: The UK admin divisions have been updated with the newly released data by the OS Open Data initiative:
http://geonames.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/uk-open-public-data/

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Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Hi Mark, this update is very confusing. You now have many places in the UK which have PPLA as their feature_code but only four of them can be the administrative capital of one of the top level admin divisions.

Julian
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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You are right. I have changed them to PPL (except Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and Belfast). I have tagged the cities that have previously been PPLA with the tag PPLA2 :
http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=uk+ppla2

With the tags we at least don't use the information. We don't have a feature code PPLA2, we could introduce one.

Cheers

Marc

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Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Thanks Marc.

If you are using PPLA2 as a value in the database then it should at least appear here:

http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/featureCodes.txt

and here:

http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html

Is the admin2_code field up-to date for these places?

I'm now very confused about London. The main entry for London is 2643743 which is centred at Charing Cross in the City of Westminster. But its Admin2 code is "City of London". This makes no sense. The administrative centre of the City of London must be the City of London and the Administrative Centre of the City of Westminster must be the City of Westminster. The London that is the capital of England and of the UK is neither of these and extends over the City of London and the 32 London Boroughs (including, confusingly, the City of Westminster, which is "a borough with city status". The administrative centre of the capital is City Hall, which is in the Borough of Southwark, which was historically the 3rd city in London, having its own cathedral.

At the very least, the admin2_code for 2643743 should be changed to Westminster, since the parliament and the current lat/long are here.

Julian

marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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Hi Julian

The PPLA2 has only been added as a tag, it is not yet an official feature code. I don't know whether it makes sense to add this as a new feature code. There is a general problem with the PPLA feature code since PPLC often also serve as PPLA and we cannot model this information, with PPLA2 it will even get worse. With the tagging system we can add as many tags to a toponym as we like. This might be a more flexible solution for properties like PPLA2.

I agree the situation with London is not yet satisfactory, at least it has not gotten worse with the introduction of the countries as ADM1.

We have been discussing about adding GOVs as ADM2 in this thread :
http://groups.google.com/group/geonames/browse_thread/thread/ecc2154d8d0ba8f1

There the list of GOVs in the UK (Scottland, Wales and Norther Ireland don't have GOVs and count as one GOV) :
East Midlands
East of England
London
North East
North West
South East
South West
West Midlands
Yorkshire & Humberside

And here the list of London Boroughs :
City of London
Barking and Dagenham
Barnet
Bexley
Brent
Bromley
Camden
Croydon
Ealing
Enfield
Greenwich
Hackney
Hammersmith and Fulham
Haringey
Harrow
Havering
Hillingdon
Hounslow
Islington
Kensington and Chelsea
Kingston upon Thames
Lambeth
Lewisham
Merton
Newham
Redbridge
Richmond upon Thames
Southwark
Sutton
Tower Hamlets
Waltham Forest
Wandsworth
Westminster

The capital of London we have in the GeoNames database is a feature class 'P' wheras the administrative divisions are a feature class 'A'. In most countries we have inserted two records to distinguish between 'A' and 'P' functions of a geographical entity. This is another disadvantage of the strict feature type classification system.

We didn't decided not to model the GOVs at all. They are (except for London) not very well known and might confuse most users of the GeoNames database.
In the case of London I have the feeling that the Boroughs are also (besides their administrative function) something like a PPLX for the PPL London. What do you think?

Marc

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Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Hi Marc,

I agree with the conscensus - don't add GOV/GOR into the heirarchy.

In the old days, London was easier, since "Greater London" existed as a unitary authority and the London Boroughs were underneath. Now its a bit of a mess.

Having London located at Charing Cross makes sense since distances from London are measure from here.

"moving" it to its current location changed its admin1_code to Westminster. I think this is the best we can do.

Julian
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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Hi Julian

Maybe it would be better to not have a admincode2 at all for London the capital as it is spanning all London Boroughs.

Marc

[WWW]
xgdlm



Joined: 27/08/2007 22:15:09
Messages: 7
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Hello,

I have load the yesterday dump ( 31/01/2008 )

if I do :

Code:
 SELECT DISTINCT admin1 FROM tmp_geoname WHERE country='GB'
 


I have 74 different adm1 for GB. I thought I would have only the "4" UK "countries"

Is there a problem of am I misunderstanding something ?

Code:
 "00"
 "08"
 "11"
 "12"
 "19"
 "32"
 "52"
 "64"
 "84"
 "86"
 "87"
 "89"
 "90"
 "91"
 "93"
 "B2"
 "C5"
 "C6"
 "C9"
 "D4"
 "D6"
 "E4"
 "E6"
 "E9"
 "ENG"
 "F2"
 "G2"
 "G5"
 "H2"
 "H7"
 "I9"
 "IOS"
 "J4"
 "J5"
 "J6"
 "J7"
 "K6"
 "M3"
 "M6"
 "N5"
 "NIR"
 "O4"
 "P6"
 "Q1"
 "Q7"
 "SCT"
 "T5"
 "T6"
 "T7"
 "T8"
 "U2"
 "U3"
 "U6"
 "U8"
 "U9"
 "V1"
 "V3"
 "V6"
 "V7"
 "V9"
 "W1"
 "W3"
 "W8"
 "WLS"
 "X3"
 "X6"
 "X7"
 "X9"
 "Y2"
 "Y6"
 "Y7"
 "Z1"
 "Z3"
 
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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You guys never give me a break

I fixed a lot of stuff and it looks now like this :

Code:
  count | admincode1
 -------+------------
   9471 | SCT
    107 |
    482 | 00
  18891 | ENG
   2825 | WLS
   1260 | NIR
 

Not yet perfect, but we are approaching. Slowly but surely.

Marc

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xgdlm



Joined: 27/08/2007 22:15:09
Messages: 7
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Thank you marc for your work. I didn't notice thoses changes because moddate wasn't change for those entries so not include in the daily modification dump.

I did a full dump update and got most of the data sanitize

thanks again

xav
Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Hi Marc,

the new admin1_codes haven't made it into admin1Codes.txt although they are in admin1CodesASCII.txt BUT in admin1CodesASCII.txt they are two letters and in the admin1_code fields in the main geonames table they are three letters.


can't seem to reply at the moment but can edit

yes, now I look again they are there, but so are all the ones that are now admin2 and some really strange ones.

the ascii file seems to be my problem - will check

Julian
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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Hi Julian

Are we speaking of GB.ENG, GB.NIR,GB.SCT and GB.WLS? I can find them in the admin1Codes.txt file.

Marc

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Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Hi Marc,

sorry - mostly my problem.

FYI I just moved over from importing admin1Codes.txt to admin1CodesASCII.txt

Julian
Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Hi Marc,

got a newly observed problem with the UK. In my download two UK places had empty admin1_codes. One is Camber in East Sussex which may be a stale entry in my dB, in the web interface it correctly shows as England/East Sussex.

The other is Sark. In the admin1_code drop down it offers the following options:

No admin div
England
Guernsey (general)
Isle of Man (general)
Jersey (general)
Northern Ireland
Scotland
Wales

According to Statoids Sark is a dependency of Guernsey so I tried choosing Guernsey but I get a save error.

admin1CodesASCII.txt has only the four countries:

GB.WLS Wales Wales 2634895
GB.SCT Scotland Scotland 2638360
GB.NIR Northern Ireland Northern Ireland 2641364
GB.ENG England England 6269131

Whereas

admin1Codes.txt has loads of old stale stuff in it:

GB.11 (UK11)
GB.12 (UK12)
GB.13 (UK13)
GB.17 Greater London
GB.19 (UK19)
GB.29 (UK29)
GB.32 (UK32)
GB.36 (UK36)
GB.52 (UK52)
GB.64 (UK64)
GB.80 (UK80)
GB.81 (UK81)
GB.82 Grampian
GB.83 (UK83)
GB.84 Lothian
GB.85 (UK85)
GB.86 (UK86)
GB.87 Strathclyde
GB.88 Tayside
GB.89 (UK89)
GB.90 Clwyd
GB.91 Dyfed
GB.92 Gwent
GB.93 (UK93)
GB.96 South Glamorgan
GB.A4 Bath and North East Somerset
GB.ENG England
GB.J2 North East Lincolnshire
GB.J3 North Lincolnshire
GB.J4 North Somerset
GB.M6 South Gloucestershire
GB.NIR Northern Ireland
GB.SCT Scotland
GB.T8 Argyll and Bute
GB.WLS Wales

I think we need Guernsey, Isle of Man and Jersey in the Admin1CodesASCII.txt and selectable and saveable on the web interface.

Julian
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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For the other places in Guernsey we used GG as primary country code, so I have changed the country.
The file admin1Codes.txt contains obsolete codes by definition.

Best

Marc

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Julian



Joined: 26/04/2007 18:25:11
Messages: 40
Location: UK
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Hi Marc,

that's fine - at least consistent and the country code is in the countryInfo.txt file.

Can we get the Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man options removed from the drop down in the editor?

Julian
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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Thanks. I have changed it. The search service per default is also using GB dependencies like Jersey, Guernsey and Isle of Man when searching for GB. In this case this is not desired and the other entries are now removed from the list.

Best

Marc

[WWW]
RGWood



Joined: 19/02/2013 15:40:59
Messages: 1
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I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this.

I have recently DL'd your GB zip file and it would seem that the first 240 or so rows are actually Greek locations.

Also, I've searched as best I can but I can't for the life of me find enumerations for the admin3 and admin4 colums, though it looks as though admin3 is a census district code. Is that correct?

Thanks.
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
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There are two british overseas territories on Cyprus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrotiri_and_Dhekelia

The admin codes are the former ons codes.

Marc

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luisquijada



Joined: 16/05/2013 14:07:27
Messages: 1
Location: Spain
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Hi guys,
This is my first post here. Thanks for your work first of all.

I have a problem with some cities in the UK for which I'm not able to find its admin-division.

Fist, I have downloaded the file admin2Codes.txt and after that I have downloaded the GB cities package from http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/GB.zip

After crossing the data, I've found that the following cities:

ID NAME CODE_ADMIN_DIVISION1 CODE_ADMIN_DIVISION2
2634715 Washington ENG 41
2637435 South Elmsall ENG 45
2637958 Shipley ENG
2642603 Middlestown ENG 45
2647120 Hemsworth ENG 45
2647278 Haworth ENG 45
2649593 Featherstone ENG 45
2651172 Dodworth ENG 37
2651948 Crofton ENG 45
2653825 Carcroft ENG 37
2656354 Bardsey ENG 45

I'm not able to find the matching admin-division entity. E.g., If I search for the code-admin-division 45 in the admin2Codes.txt does not exist.

From where can I get these missing admin-divisions ?

Thanks

--LQ[
 
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