# City and postal reference locations

Source: [GeoNames](https://www.geonames.org/), [city schema](https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/readme.txt), [postal schema and coverage](https://download.geonames.org/export/zip/readme.txt). Licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Retrieval date and country counts are in `manifest.json`.

The country shards are gzip-compressed public reference data, generated by `scripts/ocs-refresh-places.py` from cities500.zip, admin1CodesASCII.txt, and postal allCountries.zip. They retain city names, ASCII aliases, administrative regions and reference coordinates; no supplier information is submitted to GeoNames. City coverage includes populated places above 500 people and administrative seats, not every settlement. Postal coverage is incomplete and may cover prefixes only. Saudi Arabia has city coverage but no postal entries in this snapshot. The source provides no accuracy or completeness warranty.

The map matches names or postal codes within the record's reported country, using region information to disambiguate where possible. Matching ignores case, accents, spaces and punctuation; it does not use fuzzy similarity or select the most populous of ambiguous names. Postal entries must match a supplied city; multiple different points for a postal code stay unresolved, with a unique city match used instead where available. Postal coordinates are provider estimates and may not be geographic centroids. City points represent approximate city centers. Neither represents an exact company premises, installation, delivery destination, or transport route.

Vendor addresses and reported places of performance are independent. No work location is inferred from a vendor address, award search country, parent contract, or missing fields. In address/work point views, unknown, ambiguous, unavailable and uncovered locations remain unplaced. Records stay available in the supplier list. Optional global obligation bubbles represent country-level amounts and are explicitly labeled.

The Contractor → reported work view connects the address and place of performance from the same award or subaward record. If a reported country is known but a more specific location cannot be resolved, a faded, explicitly labeled country reference endpoint is used. This is not a company premises or a known worksite. Lines depict contract evidence relationships, never routes, shipment paths, staffing movements, or confirmed current operations. Teal means the two reported countries match; blue means a U.S. address supporting another country; purple means another foreign-origin address. Missing work-country evidence, SAM registrations and bare parent vehicles never produce lines.

A single airfield named explicitly in an award description may use the existing public OurAirports directory reference point in that same reported work country. Abbreviations are accepted only when another loaded award in the country spells out the facility name followed by that abbreviation in parentheses. Multiple possible facilities or ambiguous abbreviations do not select a facility endpoint. Popups link to both the award establishing the name and the directory reference. A directory point does not identify a contractor's exact work area within a facility. Original descriptions and structured location fields remain unchanged. Example: an AFCAP order explicitly expands Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB); the related country orders retain that source reference when matching PSAB.

The place finder changes map focus only; it does not restrict supplier results or establish local availability. Source record address fields remain in evidence exports; map-derived points are separate reference matches.