GeoNames Forum

Great!
But I wonder why it doesn't also work the other way around:
When I click at 'part of' in the baloon of 'Amt Föhr-Amrum' I expected to see 'Kreis Nordfriesland' and in the baloon of 'Kreis Nordfriesland' I expected to see 'Amt Föhr-Amrum' by clicking at 'contains'...

Anyway, here is the (promised) list of 'Ämter' of 'Bundesland Mecklenburg-Vorpommern'.
In this Bundesland there are no exceptions like in 'Schleswig Holstein' and the data is separated by semicolons this time, as ordered.

Best regdards.

While preparing the data I noticed two problems:
1.
The 'Amt'-Hierarchy isn't strictly hierarchy. Is that a problem for the underlying data representation?

a)
Almost all members of the 'Amt Großer Plöner See' are inside 'Kreis Plön', but there is one exception!
The municipality 'Bosau' of 'Kreis Ostholstein' is also a member of 'Amt Großer Plöner See'!
So it looks like
Kreis Ostholstein,Amt:Amt Großer Plöner See,Bosau
Kreis Plön,Amt:Amt Großer Plöner See,Ascheberg
Kreis Plön,Amt:Amt Großer Plöner See,Bösdorf

b)
Almost all members of the 'Amt Itzstedt' are inside 'Kreis Segeberg', but there is one exception!
The municipality 'Tangstedt' of 'Kreis Stormarn' is also a member of 'Amt Itzstedt'!
So it looks like
Kreis Stormarn,Amt:Amt Itzstedt,Tangstedt
Kreis Segeberg,Amt:Amt Itzstedt,Kayhude
Kreis Segeberg,Amt:Amt Itzstedt,Nahe

2.
The 'Amt' only exists in Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Other Bundesländer are using different terms for similar constructions. (Because the legal/political status differs slightly from Bundesland to Bundesland...)
- in Bundesland Rheinland-Pfalz and Sachsen-Anhalt they have a "Verbandsgemeinde"
- in Thürigen and Sachsen they have a "Verwaltungsgemeinschaft"
- in Niedersachsen they have a "Samtgemeinde"

Is it possible for the underlying data representation to differentiate between that (e.g. is there a 'type' field for 'ADMD' or a field for the correct name/narration?) or is that white-bread stuff for the database?

I am attaching a list for Schleswig-Holstein. Rest is done when I know the format is OK for you and when I have a spare weekend again.

The format is (hopefully) easy to parse...
Empty lines or lines starting wth '#' can be ignored.
"Kreisfreie Stadt": The four towns in Schleswig-Holstein not being a "Kreis".
"Amtsfreie Stadt": A town not being part of an 'Amt'.
"Amtsfreie Gemeinde": A municipality not being part of an 'Amt'.
"Amt": The long name of the 'Amt'.

The list is complete for Schleswig-Holstein. That means: Entries which are not mentioned here, should not be in the db. At least not at their resp. levels. At least if there are no errors in my data.

Have fun!

Hi marc,

I didn't say 'Gemeinde Alkersum' is wrong. (At least that wasn't my intention. I should have read my text before submitting.)

I just wanted to say that there is a missing administrative division between '(Kreis) Nordfriesland' and '(Gemeinde) Alkerum': The '(Amt) Föhr-Amrum'.
(Your link http://www.alkersum.de/Gemeinde/index.html also says this: "Alkersum ist selbständige Gemeinde im Amt Föhr - Land und im Kreis Nordfriesland.")

While searching for more arguments I found the nice picture "Vertikale Verwaltungsstruktur Deutschlands" on http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinde_(Deutschland). A quick look at the leftmost part of the picture seems to support my thesis.
BUT: In the running text it says: "Ämter sind keine staatliche Verwaltungsstufe" (engl.: "An 'Amt' is not a governmental administrative level")

That is a very bad situation (at least for me).

The ADM1-4 here at geonames are only 'official' levels, right? Hm, is there an other way to put a non-official division into the hierarchy?
E.g. by using ADMD? But how do I know that this ADMD is between ADM3 and ADM4? Is that done by the hierarchy.zip?

Or are there other/better ways to map this situation?

Is geonames.org interested in supporting such 'unoffical' but existing (!) admin levels at all?

Best regards!

Hi,
searching for 'Alkersum' shows me that it is a PPL and an ADM4, which I cannot believe (I know that area).

I found on http://www.nordfriesland.de/index.phtml?mNavID=28.13&sNavID=28.74 the document http://www.nordfriesland.de/media/custom/45_4866_1.PDF?1297086867 (Verzeichnis der Ämter, Städte und amtsfreien Gemeinden, Stand: 27.06.2011) which says that it must be "Föhr-Amrum" (if I interpret the text correctly). In that case AMD4 is called "Amt".
I believe the data on geonames.org is out of sync for ADM3 "Kreis Nordfriesland"....

(I am not sure if I am able to 'repair' this. I could try, but I believe this is done better by someone who knows what he is doing...)

Best regards!

marc wrote:

Hope this helps

Yes! I just started to convert some data! It works! I am impressed!

Now I have to check if it is that 'exact' as I hoped it would be....

marc wrote:

Hi Claus

The countrySubdivision service does not yet include the shape files for the US counties. (The files are here on my pc but not yet integrated)

Hi Marc,
this are good news!
Am I allowed to ask how do you change the shape data into something 'usable' for lat/lng? (Just a short hint or tutorial link would be VERY appreciate.)

marc wrote:

Did you see the nearest address service?
http://ws.geonames.org/findNearestAddress?lat=37.98100996893789&lng=-87.50335693359375
I am not sure that the shape file will give better results.

The findNearbyPostalCodes service is using zip code area shape files for the US and closests postal codes from lists for other countries.

http://www.geonames.org/export/#findNearbyPostalCodes

Hm, this is an interesting idea! (I didn't notice that the zip code search is using shape data!) Searching for the nearest known address and then search in the zip code shape area seems to be better than noiv's suggestion. But again I am not really sure what might happen if I am very close to a border... But nevertheless I will use this! (Mostly because there are no better alternatives.)

... at least until you told me how I am able to convert shape data into something 'usable'!

Have fun,
Claus

noiv wrote:

cla wrote:

I am in the need of determine the country and as much adminlevels (state/county/district) as possible out of a given latitude/longitude.
Could you please be more precise then.

Your solution solves the problem 'only' most of the time, but not always. What might happen if I am searching with a lat/lng near the border of an adminlevel when the nearest known place lies in another adminlevel? I think this will happen very often in regions with not that many known places like Africa or Australia....

So the best solution would be a polygon model (or whetever) of adminlevels...

noiv wrote:

Try extendedFindNearby service:

http://ws.geonames.org/extendedFindNearby?lat=52.10650519075632&lng=-0.17578125

That's not exactly what I was looking for!

It's a 'which places are nearby'-search, which might work most of the time, but not always. The fewer places are nearby a given lat/lng the more unexact the result will be...

Hi,

I am in the need of determine the country and as much adminlevels (state/county/district) as possible out of a given latitude/longitude.

I just noticed that http://ws.geonames.org/countrySubdivision?lat=37.98100996893789&lng=-87.50335693359375
gives me the country (US) and the state (Indiana), but not the county (Vanderburgh).

For GB this doesn't seems to work: http://ws.geonames.org/countrySubdivision?lat=52.10650519075632&lng=-0.17578125
returns nothing, while the German data seems to be there:
http://ws.geonames.org/countrySubdivision?lat=48.16608541901253&lng=11.66748046875
This will give me the country and the 'Bundesland'.

But http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearchJSON?postalcode=47714&maxRows=1&country=US&formatted=tr&style=FULL will give me more adminlevels: It returns city, county, state, and country. (But I think they are just generated from a list and not computed by polygon data...)

So my question is: Is there any service out there (on this very useful server or elsewhere) being able to solve this problem?

I searched a long time and found many free shapedata! Are there any tools (or tutorials) how I convert them into something useable for me? (After this is done I will grant them to the public (like this place).)

Any ideas or hints are welcome!
Claus