[NHCOLL-L:1466] Fw: geocoding

[Vr. Richard Bejsak-Colloredo-Mansfeld]

In my collection some specimens from old collection with locality labels like Tunisia, Amer.b, Andalusia, Hispanie, etc.
But specimens was collected from my point of view no in the centre of Tunisia but in north coast... the coordinated in this case can be confusing or misleading..
Vratislav


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Col·leccions 

Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:05 PM
Subject: [NHCOLL-L:1462] geocoding


Colleagues,

the treatment that the Barcelona Zoology Museum, Spain, applies to the geographical data related to the specimens of collections was mainly based on toponymic information. In order to exploit this information by means of a Geographical Information System we are currently assigning geographical coordinates to each locality. The difficulties arise when the original information is only referred to big areas like a mountain chain (Pyrenees), a whole country (Morocco) or even more a part of a continent (North Africa).

By default we can estimate the centroid and and a measure of the level of precision of the coordinates of this centroid for each one of these places. However we don't know what kind of problems we should face at the moment of working with the GIS. Is it a better idea to put the "overdimensioned" places aside the GIS?

Does anyone have any experience or opinion about?

Thanks in advance.

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Dr. Francesc Uribe
Museu de Zoologia de Barcelona
P. Picasso s/n
08003 Barcelona, Spain
e-mail:   mzbcol at intercom.es
telf.:      (+34) 93319.69.12
fax:       (+34) 93310.49.99
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