Abstract

Extracting Central Places from the Link Structure in Wikipedia
Track: Research & Sciences
Authors: Carsten Kessler

Explicit information about places is captured in a large number of geospatial datasets. This paper presents evidence that relationships between places can also be captured implicitly. It demonstrates that the hierarchy of central places in Germany is reflected in the link structure of Wikipedia, using official centers for reference. A bottom-up method that extracts centers from Wikipedia based on the link structure is introduced. The output shows significant overlap with the official centers.