Location (geography)  

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The terms location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term 'location' generally implies a higher degree of can certainty than 'place' which often has a ambiguous boundary relying more on human/social attributes of place identity and sense of place than on geometry.

Types of location/place

• An absolute location is designated using a specific pairing of latitude and longitude, a Cartesian coordinate grid (e.g.,a Spherical coordinate system), an ellipsoid-based system (e.g., World Geodetic System), or similar methods.
• A relative location is described as a displacement from another site, i.e. "3 miles northwest of Seattle".
• A place, such as a settlement or suburb is likely to have a well-defined name but have a boundary which is less well defined and which varies by context. London has an legal boundary, but this is unlikely to completely match with general usage. Areas within a town, such as Covent Garden in London again has some ambiguity as to its extent.

See also

• Universal code (cartography)