Eurogeonames: gazetteer for Europe

Amsterdam, December 2007

Geodan is participating in the creation of Eurogeonames (EGN), a European internet service for geographical names. Quite a number of topographical and land registry services in various EU countries are making these names and associated attributes directly available.

In the new service that is being created for geographical names, the gazetteer service, people will be able to search using exonyms. These are the foreign variants of names, e.g. The Hague and La Haye for The Hague. EGN will have a central portal and will be distributed to participating countries. The service will be available free for occasional interactive use. EGN is different from other gazetteer services because it draws names directly from official sources. The service also uses standards for exchanging geographical data, as laid down in the European INSPIRE directive. This directive was adopted in April to promote the exchanging and sharing of geographical data between EU countries.

Geodan is responsible for developing the service software and is involved in such matters as defining the data model, refining the communication interfaces, the construction of conversion modules for the participating organisations and finding user applications.