We recently released the latest version of our geo-data to the world at large, both via the GeoPlanet API and via GeoPlanetData. Hidden away inside the data was a real world example of the part of the GeoPlanet documentation which talks about Naming and Representation of places:
“Yahoo! aims to capture the geography of the Earth as it is used by the world’s people. To this end we are guided by various standards and sources of geographical information. For country codes and names, we rely on ISO 3166-1 but make no specific claim as to official designation or authority of disputed territories.
We appreciate that the subjective and personal nature of world geography ensures that there is no single authoritative hierarchy and we do not aim to impose one here. Rather, the GeoPlanet hierarchy is presented to facilitate geographic discovery, and ultimately assist in disambiguating identically named places, and resolving spatial appellations to a unique, open, and permanent identifier.”
Which is a nice way of saying that sometimes not everyone agrees on the naming and definition of a place. So how best to handle situations which involve a disputed place? Let’s use Cyprus as an example because inside the latest set of geo-data are some tweaks to how we represent Cyprus.
The Embassy of Cyprus got in touch with us because they were concerned with the way in which Cyprus was being represented on Yahoo! Weather. Specifically, that the island was being described as comprised of the Greek Cypriot Republic and the TRNC; the Embassy was unhappy that we were referencing the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. So we looked into it.
It’s at this point that the de facto and de jure of this post’s title became apparent. The TRNC does exist as a de facto entity and as such it belongs in any geographical gazetteer that attempts, as we do, to capture the world’s geography as it’s used by the world’s people, although we are making no claim as to the legality, official designation or authority of the place.
But we also accept that the TRNC is not recognised as a de jure geographical entity and the previous classification of the TRNC as an administrative unit disagreed with international standards, including ISO 3166-1. So here’s what we did.
- The TRNC became an informal region and its boundaries were checked to ensure it contains only the places that it should contain.
- We added Northern Cyprus and North Cyprus as place name variants, with Northern Cyprus as the preferred label and/or name form.
- The previous Greek Cypriot Republic WOEID was deleted and mapped to the WOEID of the country, together with any alternative names such as Rep. Cyprus and Republic of Cyprus.
- The district entities previously at Admin Level 2 moved up to become Admin Level 1, in line with ISO 3166-2.
- We checked that all other name forms, types and language were consistent with local understanding and usage.
That’s a lot of work to be undertaken, but it’s work that’s necessary and essential in order to keep our geo-data and geo products up to date, relevant and global. Next time you use GeoPlanet or one of our other geo offerings, offer up a thought to the Geo Technologies Data team who deal with this sort of data acrobatics on a regular basis.
Gary Gale, Director of Engineering, Yahoo! Geo Technologies
Photo credit: Eric Magnuson on Flickr.
