A durable geographic model
Start with where, what is returned, and the evidence behind it.
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The concepts
| Concept | Meaning | Question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Region | A geographic area that scopes data and operations: a city, state, country, administrative area, or supported boundary. | Where are we working? |
| Feature | A structured geographic object returned to software, with geometry or coordinates, properties, identifiers, and source context where available. | What can the application use? |
| Observation or record | Information asserting something about the physical world at a place and, when available, a time. | What evidence do we have? |
| Reported feature | A feature sourced from reported records such as permits, incidents, crimes, accidents, or community issues. | What was reported here? |
| Visual feature | A feature detected from imagery such as satellite or street-level captures. | What does this place look like? |
| Dataset | A published or user-owned collection of related geographic records or features. | Which collection does this come from? |
Features are geographic objects
Features are the objects an application searches, maps, routes to, filters, or computes over. They can represent places, infrastructure, natural geography, public records, conditions, or observations—not only points of interest on a map.
Two kinds of features: Reported and Visual
Every feature is either Reported or Visual. Reported features come from records about the world—permits, crimes, accidents, service requests, and other community issues. Visual features are detected from imagery—satellite or street-level captures that describe what a place looks like. Filter by either kind in the feature catalog.
| Kind | Source | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Reported | Public records, incidents, and observations filed about a place. | Construction permits, crimes, traffic accidents, service requests |
| Visual | Detections from satellite or street-level imagery. | Building footprints, visual scene matches, street-level character |
Evidence and provenance
A returned feature may represent a persistent object, an event, a government record, a condition, or a model-derived detection. Source, capture time, publication time, confidence, and identifiers help an application understand what the result asserts and how to use it responsibly.