geo position meta tags

[rfontaine]

One of my sites deals with subjects that are good for geo tagging. For example, I am using the following meta tags (fake coordinates shown):

<meta name="geo.position" content="24.41773;-19.15746" />
<meta name="geo.region" content="US-MA" />
<meta name="geo.placename" content="abctown,MA" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="24.41773,-19.15746" />

I have looked all over but cannot find an accepted tag for "Elevation".

Would the elevation tag be <meta name="geo.elevation" ...?

Having been a land surveyor for much of my life, a tag for elevation would seem to be an obvious need since lat/long only describes a line from the center of the earth into outerspace. You need the third coordinate, which is elevation, to tie down the position to only one possible point.

Also, what might be your suggestion for the use of other geo related tags.

[rfontaine]

Guess that goes beyond anyone's expertise here?

[VegasRook]

If you are looking for a point on a map, elevation is not required.

Thus, there's no elevation tag. ICBM, as you might know, is a missile. The data used to guide them was a lat/long number.

And no, I don't think the question was above the expertise level here. But, I can't speak for everyone.

Good luck.

[rfontaine]

Ah but you forget - there are many kinds of maps, not just road maps depicting the topic in two dimensions.

For example, a map of an underground mining operation with shafts at several levels. That requires 3-D coordinates.

The position of an aircraft in flight.

I can go on and on.

So, knowing this, does anyone out there know of any commonly accepted meta tag for elevation?

[rfontaine]

Anyone know of a commonly accepted meta tag for elevation, or does one exist?

If such a meta tag is lacking, this is a serious gap IMHO.

[tedster]

Who is going to use the meta tag? Any meta tag can be employed if there are parties on both ends who agree to the format.

The W3C has proposed a geotag system for RDF that includes altitude -- and this system requires a companion xmlns (xml namespace) which they also have made available. The W3C also notes that many services to date have not defined altitude. See [w3.org...] for more.

An application of the W3Cs's namespace for geotagging would look like this:

<span style="display:none" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#">
<geo:lat>46.1</geo:lat>
<geo:long>124</geo:long>
<geo:alt>2123.4</geo:alt></span>

The units that the W3C defined in the namespace for those three tags are:

latitude - The WGS84 latitude of a SpatialThing (decimal degrees)
longitude - The WGS84 longitude of a SpatialThing (decimal degrees)
altitude - The WGS84 altitude of a SpatialThing (decimal meters above the local reference ellipsoid)

[rfontaine]

Thank you tedster, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Yes, I know that a site can make up any meta tag it wants. But I am looking for commonly accepted elevation meta tag(s) that are not going to be unique to just my site.

[Quadrille]

Purely out of interest, Why?

And will you entering the coords of the host (which could conceivably be relevant) or the coords of your subject matter, which seems a little arbitrary?

My concern is that if there's no value, other than personal satisfaction, then it's just more clutter like 90% of meta tags.

Sorry if I come across as overly negative; I am genuinely interested in what possible uses you see for this tag.