bowdenweb

GeoNames is a geographical database that integrates various related geodata. GeoNames is shared under a creative commons attribution license, is available for download free of charge, and users can manually edit, or add new data as need be.

I read about GeoNames while researching Linked Data, after a quick run through of the user manual, I did a search for Virginia Beach in the United States. It returned GeoNameId : 4791259, the GeoNames representation of Virginia Beach, va. While there is a plethora of named places in Virginia Beach, it still seems quite sparse to me; randomly, there is an overwhelming mobile home representation amongst the named places (some realtor knew what they were doing). The data is available in csv and png formats for download. The png representation of Virginia Beach’s Geoname is shown below.

It seems like GeoNames could use some serious updates; any idea(s) how this can be achieved without manually entering/editing it all? How would you use this data?