2. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 1 28-Jun-15 http://atlas.gc.ca Atlas of Canada 6th Edition Gazetteer Service & Find a Place Application The Atlas of Canada

3. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 2 28-Jun-15 Overview Background – Who we are? Canada’s Geographical Names (CGNS) Feature Name Tagging Gazetteer Service Find a Place Application Find a Place Next Steps Questions

4. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 3 28-Jun-15 The Atlas of Canada Mission Statement The Atlas of Canada provides authoritative, current and accessible geographic information products at a national level. Working with partners, the Atlas facilitates the integration and analysis of diverse data in order to increase overall knowledge about Canada.

5. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 4 28-Jun-15 Canadian Geographical Names Service A distributed toponymic data service for the CGDI operated by the Geographical Names Section The purpose is to deliver a national view of Canada’s geographical names into the standards and technology framework of the CGDI The Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) is the technology, standards, access systems and protocols necessary to harmonize all of Canada’s geospatial data bases, and make them available on the internet. CGDI is facilitated by GeoConnections

6. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 5 28-Jun-15 Feature Tagging 1:7.5million and 1:1million scales Statistical framework: provinces, cities, towns, villages, hamlets, municipalities, Indian reserves Islands and island groupings Hydrology: rivers and lakes

7. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 6 28-Jun-15 Tagging Challenges No control over the structure and content of the names database Hierarchies Relationships between framework layers Duplicate names for the same feature - Pan- Canadian names or cross provincial names Time Stamps Features with fuzzy boundaries – bays, capes Data tagged at more than one scale

8. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 7 28-Jun-15 CGDI Gazetteer Service The CGDI Gazetteer Service performs ‘on the fly’ linking of toponymy to feature data.

9. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 8 28-Jun-15 Concise Gazetteer User (human) selects place name of interest. Clicks on Go. User enters place feature. Find a Place Database (FAPD) Find a Place Application

10. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 9 28-Jun-15 Adding Thematic Data

11. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 10 28-Jun-15 All official names in Canada are stored in the Geographical Names Section of Canada database (CGNDB). Each official name (place or physical feature) is assigned a unique identifier, e.g. Pictou County –CBDUD.This identifer is used to obtain the feature extent from the WFS, based on the official name queried. This unique identifier is the primary key that relates the tables in the Find a Place Database (FAPD) together. Each table represents a feature type (e.g. river, census division) which contains the thematic attribute information from the Atlas of Canada database. The thematic data is derived from Atlas thematic shapefiles. Find a Place Database Find a Place Database

12. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 11 28-Jun-15 Content Perspective: Add secondary names. Secondary names are non-official names, such as health districts, ecozones, etc. Resolve issues of labelling/symbology. Add more thematic layers, e.g. drainage basins. Eventually, allow users to locate any place/feature on a thematic map. Locate places on different and appropriate scales, such as the 1: 1 million, and possibly topo-maps (1:250 000/1:50 000). Continually add more thematic data to FAPD. Find a Place Next Steps...

13. Earth Sciences Sector Natural Resources Canada Slide 12 28-Jun-15 L’ Atlas du Canada Atlas of Canada The http://atlas.gc.ca Come visit !