Canadian Geographical Names Data Base

GeoBase is a federal, provincial and territorial government initiative that is overseen by the Canadian Council on Geomatics (CCOG). It is undertaken to ensure the provision of, and access to, a common, up-to-date and maintained base of quality geospatial data for Canada. Through the GeoBase, users with an interest in geomatics have access to quality geospatial information at no cost and with unrestricted use.

These are the fundamental principles that GeoBase operates under and that direct the decision making process on a regular basis:

Provincial, territorial, and municipal stakeholders agreed to work together to ensure the availability of high-quality geospatial data covering the entire Canadian landmass. This data is collected once and maintained closest to the source, and provided freely through the GeoBase with no restrictions for users.

GeoBase has partnerships with federal, provincial, territorial, municipal government, and private companies, with the dual goals of eliminating data duplication and optimizing collectively available resources. GeoBase partners are involved in different levels of the data production process such as project funding, sharing of source data or by working on data collection and data processing.

All GeoBase data must conform to the following technical characteristics:

The purpose of this layer is to store names and their attributes that have been approved by the Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC) and to make these authoritative records available for government and public use. These records include the names of over 70,000 populated places and administrative areas; 300,000 water features; and 115,000 terrain features (e.g., mountains and peninsulas).

Since 2003, GeoBase has provided a consistent, accurate, and current NRN. The first edition of the NRN depicted the centerline of over 1.1 million kilometers of non-restricted use roads in Canada. In the fall of 2007 the second edition of the NRN was launched. NRN 2.0 includes place names, street names, and address ranges between intersections.

Road network data provides the framework for many geomatics applications such as mapping, geo-coding, geographic searching, and area delineations. NRN data can be used in a wide variety of activities, including: managing road operations, business development and marketing, transportation, and government services delivery (e.g. census and elections).

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