Mass content adding/Geographic data/Using NGA data

Description

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency of US military has public service called "GEOnet Names Server (GNS)" [1]. This service can be used as the basic data source for mass adding of geographic data outside of United States of America and Antartica. Data are not perfect and it is necessary to combine other sources, but it is very good starting point for all mass content adding related to geography. Their description of the service is:

• The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA) and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names' (US BGN) database of foreign geographic feature names. The database is the official repository of foreign place-name decisions approved by the US BGN. Approximately 20,000 of the database's features are updated monthly.
• Geographic Area of Coverage: Worldwide excluding the United States and Antarctica. For names in the U.S. and Antarctica, visit the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) web site.
• The GNS contains 4.0 million features with 5.5 million names (approximate).
• The coordinate system for data served by GNS is WGS84.
• Coordinates in the GEOnet Names Server are approximate and are intended for finding purposes only.
• The online database is updated on a bi-weekly schedule.

Country files are in zipped tab separated txt file. They can be found at [2] and [3] place.

Localization

Main article Mass content adding/Geographic data/Using NGA data/Localization.

Software

Main article Mass content adding/Geographic data/Using NGA data/Software.