GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES AS PART OF THE GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND NATIONAL SPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURES Željko HEĆIMOVIĆ, Željka JAKIR, Zvonko ŠTEFAN, Danijela KUKIĆ zeljko.hecimovic@cgi.hr, zeljka.jakir@cgi.hr, zvonko.stefan@cgi.hr, danijela.kukic@gmail.com 1
CONTENT: I. Introduction II. United Nations and UNGEGN III. UNGEGN World Geographical Names Database IV. INSPIRE V. EuroGeoNames VI. Geographical Names Register of the Republic of Croatia (RoC) VII. RoC Geographical Names Register Internet service 2
The toponyms, as an integral part of the global, regional and national spatial data infrastructures, are defined by: UN resolutions defining the geographical names as part of the spatial infrastructure Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) Directive of the European Parliament defining the geographical names as part of the spatial infrastructure binding for all EU member States, Law on State Survey and Real Property Cadastre of the Croatian Parliament - defining National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and authority for keeping geographical name records. 3
II. United Nations United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) 4
Resolutions on geographical names are passed by UN UN conferences on geographical names standardization Held every 5 years (next in 2012) Conference Location Year 1 Geneva 1967 2 London 1972 3 Athens 1977 4 Geneva 1982 5 Montreal 1987 6 New York 1992 7 New York 1998 8 Berlin 2002 9 New York 2007 5
UNGEGN (founded in 1959): is a permanent UN expert body for geographical names standardization. is the umbrella organization for geographical names standardization. unites standardization efforts into a global structure, creating the foundations in the field of the geographical names standardization. defines the principles, procedures and processes for the geographical names standardization. 6
The Eighth UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, Berlin, 2002. RESOLUTION: VIII/16 Geographical Names Integration into the national and regional spatial data infrastructures. THE CONFERENCE, Recognizes that the standardized geographical names are a component of the successful development of national economies in all countries, Notes that the geographical names serve the common approach to geo-information and the spatial data infrastructure, Recommends that the standardized geographical names are considered during the establishment of the national and regional spatial data infrastructure and to be included in its development and implementation. 7
The Eighth UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, Berlin, 2002 RESOLUTION: VIII/8 Support to the UN Working Group for Geo-Information THE CONFERENCE, Notes that the UN Working Group for Geo-Information works on the establishment of the UN spatial data infrastructure, Also notes that the UN Working Group for Geo-Information has recognized geographical names as the main component of this infrastructure, Recommends that UNGEGN cooperates with the UN Working Group in developing the toponyms as a part of the UN Spatial Data Infrastructure, Also recommends that UNGEGN experts actively support 8 this UN Working Group.
The Ninth UN Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, New York, 2007 RESOLUTION: IX/10 Support to education and publication THE CONFERENCE, Grateful to the United Nations Statistics Division for its support in organizing educational courses in the area of geographical names standardization, Underlines the importance of education, especially for the participants from the developing countries, as the main element of the national spatial data infrastructure and preservation of the cultural heritage, Recognizes the importance of electronic and printed form of documents available in all official UN languages. 9
III. UNGEGN World Geographical Names Database 10
UNGEGN WORLD GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES Database contains the basic geographical names for all UN member State, Global database of UN names of States and their capitals and bigger cities in the original, national language and official UN languages with audio databases with the pronunciation of the city names, Croatia is fully represented in this database. 11
UNGEGN WORLD GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES DATABASE http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo 12
UNGEGN WORLD GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES DATABASE http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo 13
UNGEGN WORLD GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES DATABASE http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo 14
IV. Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE) 15
INSPIRE Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament adopted on March 14, 2007, is aimed at establishing the spatial data infrastructure in Europe. The purpose of the infrastructure is to support the definition, implementation, monitoring and development of activities of the community. INSPIRE defines the spatial data infrastructure in Europe and treats geographical names as a separate group of data. Geographic names are defined as part of the regional (EU) spatial infrastructure. 16
INSPIRE Directive - Spatial Data Topics Annex I 1. Coordinate referential system 2. Geographical network 3. Geographical names 4. Administrative units 5. Addresses 6. Cadastral parcels 7. Transport networks 8. Hydrography 9. Protected areas Annex II 1. Elevations 2. Coverage 3. Orthophotos 4. Geology Annex III 1. Statistical circles 2. Buildings 3. Soil 4. Land use 5. Protection and safety of people 6. Vservices 7. Environmental monitoring tools 8. Production and industrial goods 9. Agricultural and water means 10. Population spread demography 11. Zoning / restrictions / regulation zones & reporting units 12. Natural risks zones 13. Atmospheric conditions 14. Meteorological geographic characteristics 15. Oceano-geographic characteristics 16. Sea areas 17. Bio-geographic areas 18. Settlements and biotopes 19. Distribution of species 20. Energy resources 17 21. Mineral resources
INSPIRE geographical names specification 18
INSPIRE and geographical names multi-language character of geographical names has to be preserved, it is permitted to duplicate geographical names and addresses (e.g. minority language or exonyms) not permitted with other groups of data, Geographical names are not translated but used as exonyms (eg. Dunav (hrv), Danube (eng, fre), Danubio (ita, spa), Tonava (fin), Danubi (cat), (gre),...) Generic conceptual model does not require the countries to provide linguistic information, INSPIRE application schemes must not allow for the mixing of various languages in one series of signs, except in the case of several language official names. 19
Settlement: Kneževi Vinogradi (hrv), Hercegszöllös (hun), Kнежeви Виногради (srp) OFFICIAL NAMES 20
V. EuroGeoNames (EGN) 21
EGN is a system of the European geographic names infrastructure, EGN is a pan-european service of the geographic names register, EGN has been developed in line with the INSPIRE application scheme of the geographical names register (D2.5 Generic Conceptual Model, V3.1), EuroGeoNames system under the authority of EuroGeographics, EuroGeoNames system is the development part of INSPIRE binding for the EU member States. 22
EuroGeoNames (EGN) - 12 countries are involved at the moment, - Croatia has been involved since 2009, - Croatia is the only non-eu Member participating in EGN. 23
EuroGeoNames (EGN) http://www.eurogeonames.com/refappl 24
VI. Geographical Names Register of the Republic of Croatia 25
The Register contains geographical names in the territory of the Republic of Croatia (endonyms). At the moment, the data available is the data of the Geographical Names Register based on the topographic scale of 1: 200,000 and additional originals in larger scale. The main object classes for which the Register contains names are: counties, towns/municipalities, settlements, islands, rivers, lakes, mountain peaks, airports, national parks, nature parks, other protected natural objects, UNESCO cultural heritage of the Republic of Croatia and other dominant geographic objects in corresponding scale. 26
Geographical names of national minorities The right to use a minority language as an official language is defined by: RoC Constitution Law on National Minorities Local government documents 27
VII. GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES REGISTER INTERNET SERVICE 28
Public service 7/24: http://cgnd.cgi.hr:8081 The service enables: search is not conditioned by small or capital letters, It is possible to search identical text or a text contained in a geographical name (eg. search for "Knin + contains will yield the following results: Knin, Kninsko polje, Šibenik- Knin County), Google map, satellite photo or hybrid illustration are used for visualizing the search results for a specific name. 29
Search by geographical characteristic (object) http://cgnd.cgi.hr:8081 30
Spatial queries by counties http://cgnd.cgi.hr:8081 31
Register search http://cgnd.cgi.hr:8081 32
Search results visualization The service provides an EGN object classification in 11 languages: Croatian (hrv), English (eng), German (ger), French (fre), Italian (ita), Spanish (spa), Dutch (dut), Hungarian (hun), Slovenian (slv), Slovakian (slo) and Czech (cze). 33
Services for correcting and proposing a new geographical name 34
CONCLUSION Geographical names have been recognized in official documents as the fundamental part of the global, regional and national spatial data infrastructures. There are user-oriented solutions of the geographical names IT systems at the global, regional and national level. Each of the systems is developed with regards to the specific conditions and time in which they are created. 35
Knowledge is a drop in the sea of ignorance. Thank you for your attention! 36