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 in Wikipedia.

International references

• The CIA World Factbook, which contains tables of miscellaneous facts about the countries of the world.
  Note that this was taken down on 4 February 2026 so an archive such as the Internet Archive now has to be used instead.
• The U.S. Department of State website, which contains a variety of facts and statistics about countries of the world.
• 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.

Australia

Geoscience Australia's place name search

Bangladesh

Brazil

• 2000 census results, per city/municipality
• 2004 population estimates, less information, but in a single excel file

Bulgaria

• 2001 census results, including provinces (population, gender, ethnic group, religion and mother tongue) and municipalities (population and gender)
• Most recent population data by province, village.

Burkina Faso

• 2005 population estimates
• Various data, including sub-village divisions
• 1975 census(?)
• 1985 census
• 1996 census
• 2006 census
• 2019 census

Canada

• Statistics Canada: Data from the most recent census on cities across Canada is available here.

Finland

• Demographic data is from the Population Register Centre.

Hong Kong

• Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong

India

• Census of India 2001: Data from the 2001 Census, including cities, villages and towns. (Provisional)
• Census of India 2001: Final data of the 2001 census.

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.)

Norway

• Statistics Norway (In Norwegian)

Papua New Guinea

• United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.

United States

GR1

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.

GR2

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 a very good 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 (United States Census) for a list of the definition of race according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

GR3

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, etc. The data provided include geographic coordinates, elevation, population (if applicable), and the FIPS codes for the state and county containing the feature (but not the feature itself). Note that elevations might be interpolated, locations of non-point features may be either approximate centres or mouths, and locations of cities may be arbitrary choices of a feature within the city. Buildings, post offices, and several other feature classes were added during phase 2, but were removed in 2017 when they were considered in retrospect too burdensome to maintain. Some data views may have been based upon topical subsets, such as the National Map Names, or the "Concise" and "Historic" lists. See also Wikipedia:Reliability of GNIS data.

GR4

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.

GR5

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's 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.

GR6

A list of the U.S. county seats: National Association of Counties (Most, but not all counties)

Montana Natural Resource Information System

Contains information on a wide range of geographic topics related to the U.S. state of Montana.

See also

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates
• Geographic coordinate system
• List of subnational entities

References