Gazetteer Services

A gazetteer service provides network access to spatial information by geographic identifier; it acts as a sort of “geolocator” that translates between geographic labels and locations.

The CGDI provides several gazetteer services that find geographic regions based on secondary reference systems. These secondary reference systems are a means of geocoding a point or a region by some arrangement, such as postal code, CGDI place name, the Canadian Geographical Name Service, or the National Topographic System.

CGDI gazetteer services extend traditional gazetteer services by:

• Returning complex geometries (polygons, lines) for features that are linked between the toponymic name source and feature geometry collections;
• Returning calculated geometry of bounding boxes or areas of interest for features which are linked between the toponymic name source and feature geometry collections;
• Combining place names with spatial searches; and
• Finding place name information with text or spatial searches.

CGDI gazetteer services return record(s) for matching place names with geometry in an XML or GML format.