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Place Name Gazetteer - Scotland

Place-names represent a fundamental geographical identifier, which also have considerable cultural, historical and linguistic importance. Scotland had a great tradition of publishing descriptive (long-form) gazetteers in the 19th century.


This dataset is the GIS point format output from a project funded by the Scottish Government in the early 2010s, to create a Definitive Place-Name Gazetteer for Scotland, which helped meet the INSPIRE requirements for a place-name layer. The data also forms the underlying content for the Gazetteer for Scotland web pages: https://www.scottish-places.info/


In 2009 a workshop was run in conjunction with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) to examine the range of gazetteers in use in Scotland, together with a broad set of requirements. This identified a number of organisations which hold or maintain at least 15 different gazetteers that include geographical names for Scotland. The two most significant gazetteers were the Gazetteer for Scotland and the Ordnance Survey 1:50000 (OS 1:50K) product – which together form the basis for this dataset.


The Gazetteer for Scotland is a descriptive gazetteer, with a modest number (22,000) of rich entries, including a textual description and rich feature-typing. At the time of creation, the OS 1:50K gazetteer had long been Ordnance Survey's only place-name gazetteer, used as part of numerous applications.


It was decided that, for this new 'definitive' place name gazetteer, any named feature could/ should potentially be included, but it was accepted that the list will always be incomplete.


This dataset could be used (and potentially linked with) other datasets like the Ordnance Survey Open Names, the One Scotland Gazetteer and the Historical Names gazetteer.


The methodology for this data was a combination of automated and manual editing. Automated methods were used in feature classification and duplicate detection. Manual editing was required both to confirm or provide a feature classification, but also to improve the spatial referencing.


Standards had to be adopted; for example water bodies were spatially located by a point which approximated its centre, while rivers were spatially located at their termination and other liner features by a random point along their length. The former gives a useful spatial reference, the latter in many cases does not.


Quality checking suggests that 95% of points were located to 100m or better, and 5% located to 20m or better. More than 90% of features are classified correctly, on the basis of the evidence available.


Copyrights and acknowledgments. The dataset is (c) Bruce M. Gittings (University of Edinburgh) and the Scottish Government.


This dataset contains Ordnance Survey data (c) Crown copyright and database right 2010, released by The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, April 2010.

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Identification info

Alternative title

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Metadata Language
English
Character set
UTF8
Dataset Reference Date (Revision)
2023-05-26
Identifier
www.spatialhub.scot / sh_pgn
Point of contact
  The Improvement Service - Spatial Hub Custodian
Livingston , West Lothian , EH54 6AX , United Kingdom
01506 282012
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

  • Geographical names

Limitations on Public Access
Other restrictions
Other constraints

Limitations on public access

Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints

Use of the data is available to any organisation that is a member of the PSGA (Public Sector Geospatial Agreement). It is not currently commercially available or accessible to academics.

Spatial representation type
Vector
Topic category
  • Location
N
S
E
W


Temporal reference

Temporal extent
Begin
2018-05-15
End
2118-05-15
 
Temporal extent
 
 
Code
EPSG:4258
Code
EPSG:27700
Code
EPSG:3857

Distribution Information

Data format

Data format
Name Version

OGC:WMC

1.3.0

 

Transfer options

Resource Locator
Protocol Resource Locator Name

WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

https://data.spatialhub.scot/dataset/place_name_gazetteer-is

Place Name Gazetteer - Scotland

 
 

Data quality info

Quality Scope
Dataset
Conformity
Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services
Explanation
Degree
false
Statement

This data was created by Bruce Gittings with assistance from Scottish Government and the Improvement Service.


Please contact spatialhub@improvementservice.org.uk for more details. spatialhub@improvementservice.org Please contact spatialhub@improvementservice.org.uk for more details.

 

Metadata

File identifier
518f7c89-dd22-4615-b252-c3804df304d6 XML
Metadata Language
English
Resource type
Dataset
Metadata Date
2023-11-15T14:40:17
Metadata standard name

UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version

2.3

Point of contact

Organisation name

The Improvement Service

Position name

Spatial Hub Custodian

Voice

01506 282012

City

Livingston

Administrative area

West Lothian

Postal code

EH54 6AX

Country

United Kingdom

Electronic mail address

spatialhub@improvementservice.org spatialhub@improvementservice.org.uk

Role
Point of contact
Point of contact
  The Improvement Service - Spatial Hub Custodian
Livingston , West Lothian , EH54 6AX , United Kingdom
01506 282012
 
 
 

Overviews

N
S
E
W


Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
Geographical names

Publishing Body

Access the portal
Full access to the portal and metadata.

Associated resources (if any)

Not available


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