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Gazetteers

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Place names; Toponyms; Knowledge organization systems; Ontologies

Definition

A simple definition is that gazetteers are dictionaries of placenames. The digital gazetteer as a component of georeferenced information systems, however, is more formally modeled. A gazetteer is defined as a collection of gazetteer entries, each of which contains, at a minimum, the tuple N, F, T where N is a place name, F is a formal expression of geographic location – a footprint, and T is a place type expressed with a term (or code) from a typing scheme. Applications often require, in addition, relationships between gazetteer entries, documentation of time frames, and additional information (as described below). The gazetteer model is a type of knowledge organization system (KOS) – or ontology – which can be modified to represent other classes of spatial-temporal information, such as named time periods and named events [3].

Key Points

Gazetteers support bidirectional translation between informal...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Alexandria Digital Library. Guide to the ADL Gazetteer Content Standard. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 2004.

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  2. Hill L.L. Feature Type Thesaurus. Alexandria Digital Library, 2002.

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  3. Hill L.L. Georeferencing: The Geographic Associations of Information. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

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  4. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) – Technical Committee 211. Geographic Information – Spatial Referencing by Geographic Identifiers (ISO 19112:2003), 2003.

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  5. Janée G. and Hill L.L. ADL Gazetteer Protocol, Version 1.2. Alexandria Digital Library, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 2003.

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  6. Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. Gazetteer Service Profile of the Web Feature Service Implementation Specification. OGC 05–035rl, version 0.9.1, 2006.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Linda L. Hill

Authors
  1. Linda L. Hill
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Hill, L.L. (2009). Gazetteers. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_174

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