In geography,location orplace is used to denote aregion (point, line, or area) onEarth's surface. The termlocation generally implies a higher degree of certainty thanplace, the latter often indicating an entity with an ambiguous boundary, relying more on human or social attributes ofplace identity andsense of place than on geometry. Apopulated place is called asettlement.
Alocality,settlement, or populated place is likely to have a well-defined name but a boundary that is not well defined, but rather varies by context.London, for instance, has a legal boundary, but this is unlikely to completely match with general usage. An area within a town, such asCovent Garden in London, also almost always has some ambiguity as to its extent. In geography, location is considered to be more precise than "place".
A relative location, or situation, is described as a displacement from another site. In simpler terms, relative location is where something is compared to another. Relative location is widely used for travelling andshipping because it helps people know where a place is compared to another. For example, France is farther west than Poland, though both are in Europe.
An absolute location can be designated using a specific pairing oflatitude andlongitude in aCartesian coordinate grid (for example, aspherical coordinate system or an ellipsoid-based system such as theWorld Geodetic System) or similar methods. For example, the position ofNew York City in the United States can be expressed using the coordinate system as the location 40.7128°N (latitude), 74.0060°W (Absolute locations are also relative locations, since even absolute locations are expressed relative to something else. For example, longitude is the number of degrees east or west of thePrime Meridian, a line arbitrarily chosen to pass throughGreenwich, England. Similarly, latitude is the number of degrees north or south of theequator. Because latitude and longitude are expressedrelative to these lines, a position expressed in latitude and longitude is also a relative location.[1]
