Reference · built on requestCommons signalPlaces & geographic reference

Who's On First

Open gazetteer of administrative places with stable 64-bit identifiers, hierarchies, and concordances via GeoJSON and SQLite.

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About

Who's On First is an open gazetteer of places worldwide maintained by Geocode Earth and the open mapping community. Every place is assigned a permanent 64-bit numeric identifier that never changes. Records model places from continents, countries, and regions down to localities, neighbourhoods, microhoods, and venues, complete with parent hierarchies, localized name variations, and concordance links to external databases like GeoNames and OpenStreetMap.

Through Fibric, an operator references Who's On First place hierarchies and stable IDs, proposing administrative region tags or parent territory alignments for customer records and operational facilities.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from Who's On First and what it could propose, based on the publisher's published interfaces. Fibric builds it under a managed deployment when you request it; selecting it here installs nothing.

Inputs

  • Stable 64-bit place identifiers and placetype classifications across global hierarchies
  • Standard GeoJSON feature records containing boundary geometries and centroid coordinates
  • Hierarchical parent-child relationships linking venues and neighbourhoods to parent localities and countries
  • Concordance cross-references mapping Who's On First IDs to GeoNames, Wikidata, and ISO codes
  • Downloadable SQLite database bundles and country-level GeoJSON distribution archives

Proposed actions

Read-only. This feed informs operators; it changes nothing.

Proposed actions are target capabilities. Every action runs propose-first and needs a validated deployment and the appropriate permissions.

What you can build

  • Establish stable geographic entity keys across systems

    Tag operational assets and delivery accounts with Who's On First 64-bit place IDs, proposing cross-system entity reconciliation that survives municipal renamings.

    With Site Benchmark, Territory Balance

  • Standardize multi-level administrative hierarchies

    Traverse parent hierarchies from customer street addresses to determine precise municipality, county, and region classifications for territory routing.

    With Address Repair, Field Dispatch

  • Link external gazetteer identifiers via concordances

    Cross-reference external supplier location records against Who's On First concordance tables, proposing unified ID mappings across disparate location databases.

    With Metric Reconciliation

Requirements

  • Spatial parsing logic for GeoJSON feature collections or SQLite spatial databases
  • Placetype filter handling to traverse hierarchies from venue up to country
  • Local storage for SQLite distribution bundles or selective geographic country slices
Authentication
None. Who's On First data is distributed as open data via public git repositories, SQLite databases, and HTTPS download bundles with no key required.

Limits

  • Boundary polygon detail varies across administrative levels and remote territorial boundaries
  • Datasets are distributed as flat files, git repositories, and SQLite bundles rather than a central hosted query API
  • Venue-level point data is more complete in metropolitan areas than in rural regions

Access and pricing

Reference listing. Public feed access is separate from Fibric integration. If you request this feed, your quote covers the build, usage, and support.

Request Who's On First ↗

Questions and answers

What is the core principle of Who's On First place IDs?
Who's On First assigns immutable 64-bit integers to places. When a place undergoes substantial political or geographic change, a new ID is created, and the old record links to it via superseding properties.
How is Who's On First data distributed?
Data is distributed as individual GeoJSON files in git repositories, downloadable SQLite database files per country and placetype, and bundled archive downloads.
What license applies to Who's On First data?
The data is released under Creative Commons Zero (CC0 1.0 Universal), dedicating all records to the public domain without restrictions.
Ask about Who's On First

Ask about the capabilities and requirements in this listing.

For project-specific requirements, contact Fibric.

This Commons signal listing is developed, published, and supported by Fibric. It reads public data published by Who's On First (whosonfirst.org). Upstream agencies and projects are the property of their respective owners, who are not affiliated with Fibric and do not sponsor or endorse this listing. Trademark policy