Countries Of The World – General & Geographic Knowledge Atlas

ISO3166-1 Country Of The World Seed Branch

MindManager provides an unparalleled range of ‘information cartography’ functionality that enables  contextual knowledge to be embedded and attached to map branches in multiple ways…

Branch Outline Shape 
For geographic area seed branches the outline shape indicates the nature of it’s borders with it’s equivelant neighbours…

CIRCLE = all coastal borders (ie. ‘island(s)’)

HEXAGON = all land borders (ie. ‘land-locked’)

 ROUNDED RECTANGLE = mixed coastal & Land borders

Note(s)
i) Assignment of shapes to geographic area seed branches is controlled by MindManager’s unique Smart Rule feature using the ‘GEO – Country – Borders’ tag (eqivelant to thematic mapping in GIS).

Image: Country Flag & Thumbnail Location Map
Incorporating country flags into map branches makes for swifter navigation and improved user experience.

Note(s)
i) Flag images are a free download from the good people at Icondrawer.com.

ii) All map images are optimised to reduce the file size.

Text: Official Name & Unique Identifying Codes
These are meticulously taken from official sources to ensure unambiguous identification of the country and easy cross-referencing with other data sources, especially GIS databases…

ISO3166-1 Official Country ‘Short Name’ in English

(ISO3166-1 alpha-2 2 character letter code – ISO3166-1 alpha-3 3 character letter code – ISO3166-1 numeric 3 digit code)

ISO3166-1 Official Country ‘Full Name’ in English

Note(s)
i) An * asterisk after the short name and italic font indicates the country is a non-sovereign state. The formatting is controlled by the attached ‘GEO – Country – Sovereign Status’ tag using MindManager’s unique Smart Rules feature.

ii) One of the multiple hyperlinks attached to the seed branch is to the relavant page for the  ISO3166 official name & code for the specific country on the ISO Online Portal. Thus the ones used on the map can be checked against the original source if it’s important (though codes & names rarely change, and all changes are documented on the page on the portal).

Embedded Data Fields: Country ‘Facts & Figures’ 
Single data fields embedded in the seed branch are another unique MindManager feature. They provide quick reference of useful stats, saving the user the time and effort of looking them up in the linked knowledge resources. These are taken from the official UNdata stats where available, or the CIA World Fact Book, or Wikipedia.

The data fields embeded in this seed topic are…

Surface Area (sq km) (2020 est. UN) – As given in the UNdata stats

Population (2020 est. UN) – As given in the UNdata stats, estimated to the nearest 1000

Pop Density (per sq km) (2020 est. UN) – As given in the UNdata stats (ie. not calculated by us from the Surface Area and Population data)

Coastline (km) – The cumulative length of the country’s coastline, as given in the CIA World Fact Book.

Land Borders (km) – The cumulative length of the country’s land borders with neighbouring countries, as given in the CIA World Fact Book.

Land Border Countries – The number of countries the country shares land borders with, as given in the CIA World Fact Book.

Mean Elevation (m) – The mean elevation of the country, as given in the CIA World Fact Book.

UN Member State since – Date on which the country joined the United Nations.

Note(s)
i) This embedded feature can be hidden / shown by clicking the green toggle arrow just above the top right corner of the embedded feature.

ii) Data fields are like single cells in spreadsheets..

• The data can be numeric or text.
• The values in cells can be calculated from other cells either in the same branch or in other branches. Formulas that define the values are built using MindManager’s ‘Autocalc’ feature (again unique).
• The values in data fields may be used to control aspects of the visual formatting (eg. colour or shape) of the seed branch using Mindmanager’s ‘Smart Rules’ feature (again unique).

iii) Fields marked with an *asterisk above (in bold with the gear icon in the embedded fields in the branch in the map) are calculated from the values of data fields in sub-branches using MindManager’s unique ‘auto-calculation’ feature.

iv) UN data is taken from the official UN Statistics Division (UNData) regional data statstics. These are updated and published online annually.

Index Marker Tags & Goups: Various
For additional contextual knowledge and dynamic map filtering…

GEO – REGION – UN Geoscheme (Numeric) – Just the numeric code part of the UN Geoscheme listing. Note this code is defined as part of the UN Staistics Division M49 standard rather than in ISO3166.

GEO – UN Geoscheme – All appropriate tags for the macro region and sub-region.

GEO – Country (ISO3166-1) – Tagged with it’s own tag – ISO3166-1 Official Country ‘Short Name’ in English (ISO3166-1 alpha-2 2 character letter code – ISO3166-1 alpha-3 3 character letter code – ISO3166-1 numeric 3 digit code). As only the country seed branch is tagged from this group, it can be used to internally navigate between the country seed topics.

GEO – Country – Sovereign Status – Either a sovereign state or non-soverign state.

GEO – Country – Borders – As per the topic shape that indicates the nature of the country’s borders with it’s equivelant neighbours – all coastal borders (ie. ‘island(s)’),  all land borders (ie. ‘land-locked’), mixed coastal & Land borders

GEO – Country – Shared Land Borders – The countries the country shares land borders with, as given in the CIA World Fact Book.

GEO – Country – Dependent Relationships – The other ISO3166-1 countries that have a dependant relationship with this country eg. as an oversses territory. Relationships are recorded both ways so the ‘mother’ country seed branch is tagged with the dependant countries, and all the dependant countries are tagged with the ‘mother’ country

Note(s)
i) The names of the marker tag groups are prefixed acccording to the ‘type’ of marker tags they contain..

• GEO – prefix indicates geographic tags, usually areas of some kind, often in a hierarchy eg. UN Geoscheme regions, sub-regions, countries, states, counties, communities etc. The names of GEO tags incorporate the official ID codes as well as names, and will always be present in some form in ‘atlas’ knowledge maps. GEO tags allow ‘spatial intelligence’ to be built into a map, even if it isn’t structured in a geographic way. When a map is ‘geo filtered’ using one of these tags it is the equivalent of using ‘Lookup Tables’ in ‘GIS’.
• TIME – prefix indicates time based tags. These can be generic (eg. months of the year, days of the week etc.) or specific (eg. a year, a date etc.). TIME tags will always be present in some form in ‘calendar’ knowledge maps.
• RESOURCE – prefix indicates some aspect of a resource, such as the type of resource or who is responsible for creating / maintaining it.

ii) Within MindManager tags…

• provide a useful means of internal navigation between map topics (clicking on the branch that is shown as being tagged with that marker in the ‘Index Task Pane’ will immediately focus the map on that banch).
• can be generated automatically from branches (the title of the parent branch is the group name and those of all the immediate sub-branches become the individual tags within the group) .
• can be copied and pasted in their groups from one map to another.

Attached Hyperlinks: Multiple
See next section for full details.