Links and Resources
6. From Placenames to Locations
Few people use coordinates to refer to locations in their daily lives. Places have names, and for location and display of places names need to be translated into coordinates.
This is done through Gazetteer services - "Service that provides access to a directory of instances of a class or classes of real-world phenomena containing some information regarding position" (definition by INSPIRE).
Practically speaking, we type a placename, resolve potential ambiguities (select from multiple places with identical or similar names) and get location coordinates. One popular example for a gazetteer is the >GeoNames service.
This functionality is frequently integrated into online apps, like the >Hexagon Geospatial Portal - try this out!