Wikipedia:Geographic references
The following is a list of sources used in the creation of encyclopedia articles on various geographic topics and locations, such as cities, counties, states, and countries. These sources are cited within the thousands of articles which link to this page.
International references
- The CIA World Factbook, which contains tables of miscellaneous facts about the countries of the world.
Source: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ - The U.S. Department of State website, which contains a variety of facts and statistics about countries of the world.
Source: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/ - The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe which produces the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations geographic coding scheme. (UN/LOCODEs). In addition to location codes, the data also provides geographical coordinates for a subset of locations.
Source: http://www.unece.org/locode
Brazil
- 2000 census results, per city/municipality
- 2004 population estimates, less information, but in a single excel file
Canada
- Statistics Canada. Data from the most recent census on cities across Canada is available here.
Hong Kong
India
- Census of India 2001 Data from the 2001 Census, including cities, villages and towns.
Ireland
- Central Statistics Office Ireland Data from the 2002 Census, including cities, villages, towns, counties and Gaeltacht regions.
Italy
- ISTAT, the official census arm of the Italian government, provides detailed demographic breakdowns and aggregate population figures for all the comuni, provinces and regions: currently the latest census year available is 2003.
- Guida ai Comuni d' Italia (Metropolis), an unofficial site that reproduces ISTAT data from other census years, and other information from official sources (surface areas of the comuni, names of frazioni and località, etc.)
- Italian Wikipedia's "WikiProject Comuni" will also be useful.
Norway
- Statistics Norway (In Norwegian)
United States
- Montana Natural Resource Information System - Contains information on a wide range of geographic topics related to the U.S. state of Montana.
- The United States Census Bureau's 2000 Census gazetteer. This was the primary source for the latitude and longitude values for about 23,500 U.S. cities. The data are indexed by state, county, and place FIPS codes.
Source: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/gazetteer/gazette.html - The United States Census Bureau's 2000 Census data. Much of the geographic and demographic information for the U.S. states, counties, and cities came from the data on the site. The data is not totally accurate due to various polling errors, but it is an approximate estimate. See the Bureau's website for more information. The data were used for the following topics: geographic areas (total, land, and water), population and housing unit densities, demographic spreads across race, age, sex, and income. The data are indexed by state, county, and place FIPS codes. See also Race (US Census) for a list of the definition of race according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Source: http://www.census.gov
http://factfinder.census.gov - The Geographic Names Information System developed by the United States Geological Survey. The data contain information on a wide range of geographic features such as populated places, rivers, mountains, certain buildings, etc. The data provided include geographic coordinates, elevation at the point, population (if applicable), and the FIPS codes for the state and county containing the feature (but not the feature itself).
Source: http://geonames.usgs.gov/ - The FIPS55 database, which contains standardized codes for populated places in the United States. The system describes the codes and the relationships between different entities, such as the part of relationship between a U.S. state and a county. It also contains zip code information.
Source: http://geonames.usgs.gov/fips55.html - The National Imagery and Mapping Agency's (NIMA) database of foreign geographic feature names. Excludes information on the United States and Antarctica. Includes geographical coordinates in the WGS-84 format. Site also includes information on the FIPS10 standard.
Source: http://www.nima.mil/gns/html/index.html - A list of the U.S. county seats.