1. An African Geographical Database Tool
GeoNyms
An African Geographical Database Tool
Yoseph Mekasha

2. GEONYMS Gazetteer tool being developed by UNECA
Collect /validate geographical names (Toponyms)
To be used by Geographical Names Authorities of Member states

3. Why gEONYMS? Provide African countries a free tool
Nationally approved (correct) names
Encourage African countries to setup or strengthen geographical authorities
Implement an African UNGEGN Geographical Names DB as part of Regional SDI and/or databases

4. The Application
Designed around three core non-functional requirements (Ideas)
Increase usability ,extensibility and availability
Open source, Platform Independence, Architectural Interoperability

5. Open Source No proprietor tools employed GPL : no payment of any sort
Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
RDBMS: SQLite
GPL : no payment of any sort
Member states can extend
Enterprise- multi user system
Web component
Social networking component

6. Platform Independent Runs on all known platforms
AIR applications built with Flex use the high- performance, cross-operating system virtual machine from Adobe Flash® Player software
Use proven, open technologies such as Tamarin, WebKit, and SQLite.

7. Architectural Compatibility
Make it easer to exchange
Member States -> African SDI names DB -> Global(UNGEGN) DB.

8. Architectural Compatibility

9. Architectural Compatibility
Make it easer to exchange
Member States -> African SDI names DB -> Global(UNGEGN) DB.

10. Architectural Compatibility
Make it easer to exchange
Member States -> African SDI names DB -> Global(UNGEGN) DB.

11. Architectural Compatibility
Make it easer to exchange
Member States -> African SDI names DB -> Global(UNGEGN) DB.

12. Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
Open Source
No proprietor tools employed
Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
RDBMS: SQLite
GPL : no payment of any sort
Member states can extend

13. Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
Open Source
No proprietor tools employed
Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
RDBMS: SQLite
GPL : no payment of any sort
Member states can extend

14. Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
Open Source
No proprietor tools employed
Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
RDBMS: SQLite
GPL : no payment of any sort
Member states can extend

15. Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
Open Source
No proprietor tools employed
Development: Adobe Flex AIR/ActionScript 3.0
RDBMS: SQLite
GPL : no payment of any sort
Member states can extend

18. How to get it Visit http://geoinfo.uneca.org/geonyms
For more information and to download the software tool

19. Users
1. Madagascar – started using it 2. Egypt, Botswana, Ethiopia are trying it using there own data 3. Kenya, Cameron … showed interest and we will be helping them to run the tests and get them started

20. Start the national debate
You can help
Promote Geographical names that reflect the culture and heritage of the countries, GeoNyms
Start the national debate

21. Yoseph mekasha, UNECA, mekasha@uneca.org
Thank you,