GRASS GIS manual: v.in.geonames

NAME

v.in.geonames - Imports geonames.org country files into a GRASS vector points map.

KEYWORDS

vector, import, gazetteer

SYNOPSIS

v.in.geonames
v.in.geonames help
v.in.geonames input=name output=name [--overwrite] [--verbose] [--quiet]

Flags:

--overwrite: Allow output files to overwrite existing files
--verbose: Verbose module output
--quiet: Quiet module output

Parameters:

input=name: Uncompressed geonames file from (with .txt extension)
output=name: Name for output vector map

DESCRIPTION

v.in.geonames imports Geonames.org country files (Gazetteer data) into a GRASS vector points map. The country files can be downloaded from the GeoNames Data Dump Server. The script generates a vector point map. Only original files can be processed (unzip compressed file first). These Geonames files are encoded in UTF-8 which is maintained in the GRASS database.

NOTES

The current DB connection is used to write the database table.

If importing into a DBF database, the original column names longer that 10 characters are shortened to 10 characters to meet the DBF column name restrictions. If this is a problem consider choosing another database driver with db.connect. The main 'geoname' table has the following fields

geonameid         : integer id of record in geonames database
name              : name of geographical point (utf8) varchar(200)
asciiname         : name of geographical point in plain ascii characters, varchar(200)
alternatenames    : alternatenames, comma separated varchar(4000)
latitude          : latitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
longitude         : longitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
feature class     : see http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html, char(1)
feature code      : see http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html, varchar(10)
country code      : ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 2 characters
cc2               : alternate country codes, comma separated, ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 60 characters
admin1 code       : fipscode (subject to change to iso code), isocode for the us and ch, see file admin1Codes.txt for display names of this code; varchar(20)
admin2 code       : code for the second administrative division, a county in the US, see file admin2Codes.txt; varchar(80) 
admin3 code       : code for third level administrative division, varchar(20)
admin4 code       : code for fourth level administrative division, varchar(20)
population        : integer 
elevation         : in meters, integer
gtopo30           : average elevation of 30'x30' (ca 900mx900m) area in meters, integer
timezone          : the timezone id (see file http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/timeZones.txt)
modification date : date of last modification in yyyy-MM-dd format

REFERENCES

GeoNames Web site
GeoNames Data Dump Server

AUTHOR

Markus Neteler

Last changed: $Date: 2008-03-13 09:01:14 +0100 (Thu, 13 Mar 2008) $

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