[R-sig-Geo] re. Creating random (but believable) geographies

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Darren Norris <doon75 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> how about simply using what already exists?
> For example,
> Brazil [data freely available (but may need to cite the source which may
> defeat what you are trying to achieve?) at:
> ftp://geoftp.ibge.gov.br/mapas/malhas_digitais/municipio_2005/E500/Proj_Geografica/ArcView_shp/
> ]
> has three sub-administrative layers (region, state, municipality).
> overlay a random polygon of your new country somewhere in the country
> (should be big enough) and you will end up with at least 2 administrative
> layers?
> If you want can then shift the coordinates to any location (ocean, middle of
> a desert etc)......
> What am I missing?

 That's an idea, but someone *might* recognise their state boundaries,
even shifted into the Atlantic and maybe even rotated and given a
silly name. I just like the idea of creating totally fictitious
regions!

 That's another interesting problem - creating fake names for regions.
I suppose you could have a set of prefixes and suffixes and join them
randomly...

 Reminds me of the time a few years ago I did a quiz round by printing
country and UK county outlines onto paper and cutting the paper into
circles so nobody knew where north was. It did confuse people...

Barry