Collaboration and information sharing across boundaries is accelerated when analysts in different organizations refer to the same place by the same name.
Accelerating GEOINT Analysis: User Feedback to Improve Geospatial Place-name Services
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Collaboration and information sharing across boundaries is accelerated when analysts in different organizations refer to the same place by the same name. Geonames, hosted by NGA, is the official US and Commonwealth repository of foreign place-names. Analysts access Geonames thousands of times per day. A re-engineered Geonames will be an operationally significant advance in technical support for GEOINT that provides considerably better access, for both humans and automated systems, to higher-quality place-name data. Using the general interview guide approach we surveyed users external to NGA to determine how well Geonames was working for them and what could be done to improve it. Informants were recommended by NGA staff embedded in external users' organizations. Informants have high expectations of Geonames and suggested extensive changes to Geonames data, user interface, search tools, and gazetteers. How well the re-engineered system addresses these users' needs will determine its success.