Geographical Web Service for Hierarchical Browsing
This web service (http://www.digipark.at/webservice/documentation/) enables to select subtrees from the TGN vocabulary, for indexing and search purposes in the context of distributed content management systems. With this service, a user can ask for a concept by typing in a string which will be matched with one of the concept's associated labels. It is possible to limit the subtree found to a given depth and a number of displayed concepts.
The service can potentially be applied to every monohierarchically structured vocabulary. It has however been developped primarily for the Thesaurus for Geographic Names (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/download.html), which provides with a link from a child concept to its parent one.
TGN features a hierarchical vocabulary of around 1.1 million names, and coordinates and other information for around 892,000 geographic places, as examplified here:
Italia ID 1000080 Path /Top of the TGN hierarchy/World/Europe/Italia Place Types primary political unit | independent sovereign nation | republic | nation | dictatorship | kingdom | inhabited region Parent 1000003 Description Inhabited since 50,000 BCE; settled by Indo-Europeans 1850 BCE, Etruscans 1600 BCE, and Greeks 800 BCE; united by Romans 270 BCE; independent states rose after fall of Holy Roman Empire, notably Naples, Milan, Florence, Venice and papacy; reunited in the 19th century; official language is Italian, though significant minorities speak German, French, and Slovene. Coordinates 12.8333E 42.8333N Elevation 0