## DESCRIPTION

v.in.geonames imports Geonames.org country files (Gazetteer data) into a GRASS vector points map. The country files can be downloaded from the GeoNames Data Dump Server. The script generates a vector point map. Only original files can be processed (unzip compressed file first). These Geonames files are encoded in UTF-8 which is maintained in the GRASS database.

## NOTES

The current DB connection is used to write the database table.

If importing into a DBF database, the original column names longer that 10 characters are shortened to 10 characters to meet the DBF column name restrictions. If this is a problem consider choosing another database driver with db.connect. The main 'geoname' table has the following fields

    geonameid         : integer id of record in geonames database
    name              : name of geographical point (utf8) varchar(200)
    asciiname         : name of geographical point in plain ascii characters, varchar(200)
    alternatenames    : alternatenames, comma separated varchar(4000)
    latitude          : latitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
    longitude         : longitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
    feature class     : see http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html, char(1)
    feature code      : see http://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html, varchar(10)
    country code      : ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 2 characters
    cc2               : alternate country codes, comma separated, ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 60 characters
    admin1 code       : fipscode (subject to change to iso code), isocode for the us and ch, see file admin1Codes.txt for display names of this code; varchar(20)
    admin2 code       : code for the second administrative division, a county in the US, see file admin2Codes.txt; varchar(80)
    admin3 code       : code for third level administrative division, varchar(20)
    admin4 code       : code for fourth level administrative division, varchar(20)
    population        : integer
    elevation         : in meters, integer
    gtopo30           : average elevation of 30'x30' (ca 900mx900m) area in meters, integer
    timezone          : the timezone id (see file http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/timeZones.txt)
    modification date : date of last modification in yyyy-MM-dd format

## SEE ALSO

db.connect, v.select

## REFERENCES

GeoNames Web site
GeoNames Data Dump Server

## AUTHOR

Markus Neteler

Last changed: $Date: 2011-11-08 01:42:51 -0800 (Tue, 08 Nov 2011) $