Geographic Names Analysis (GeoNames)

Providing Accurate Assessment of Named Locations Worldwide

Names have long been a critical component in cartographic production and with the advent of spatial databases, world geographical names are more accessible and accurate than ever before. Accurate named location analysis is essential for personnel safety and mission success, from providing a detailed database of all names associated with a given location to providing deploying personnel with accurate and up-to-date geospatial information.

Traditionally, names shown on hardcopy cartographic sources have only provided one name per location, and mistakes in earlier data may have been propagated into newer material. In an ever-changing world, names used by the people that inhabit an area can be far more diverse, creating a need for the end user to be familiar with all associated names and their variant forms for a particular location.

SAIC's GeoNames solution provides both geospatial and linguistic analysis of existing cartographic sources to help ensure that named locations are correctly identified. This includes analysis of spatial location, feature type, and all existing names with their variant and Romanized forms. Using proven analysis techniques and developed tools, SAIC's GeoNames team can provide detailed and accurate names analysis. Under contract to the intelligence community, SAIC has processed more than 50,000 geographic names and continues to expand the area of analysis.

GeoNames Toolset

Finishing Tool: marries the geospatial and linguistic components of the workflow through an Excel® viewer affording the linguistic flexibility of Excel while enabling the geospatial accuracy of the data and consolidated keyboards for efficient entry of linguistic data.

ArcMAP Quality Control Tool: allows for quality control of data while tracking errors and ensuring that corrections are handled.

Stand-alone Quality Control Tool: performs systematic checks on data, allowing analysts to focus on more subjective aspects, including verification of Dari-to-Latin, Arabic-to-Latin, and Cyrillic-to-Latin script transliteration.

This technique greatly reduces the volume of data required to transmit the changes. By applying this technology to GIS databases, SAIC can reduce update data volumes by up to a factor of 100.

• SAIC has successfully teamed geographic information system analysts skilled in the use of geospatial information and toolsets with linguists to provide a complete named locations analysis.
• SAIC performs a complete review of names that includes determining correct location, feature type, elevation, name type (differentiating between native and variant names), regional diacritics, Romanization, and transliteration.

SAIC has a variety of language capabilities, including Arabic, Kurdish, Russian, Dari, and Pashto.