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 Feature Any part of the landscape, whether natural (such as a stream or ridge) or artificalartificial [sic] (such as a road or power line). In a geographic context, features are any part of the landscape portrayed on a map, including legal entity boundaries such as city limits or county lines. See also cultural feature, nonvisible feature, visible feature.

Feature extension The imaginary straight-line extension from the end of a map feature, usually a street or road, to another feature; for example, from the end of a dead-end street to a nearby river.

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Any of the standardized systems of numeric and/or alphabetic coding issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency in the U. S. Department of Commerce, for use by the Federal Government and others. Several series of FIPS identify standard geographic codes for States, counties, metropolitan areas, congressional districts, foreign geographic entities, and named populated and related locational entities. Geographic elements to be assigned codes are first alphabetized and then assigned codes serially, generally with systematic gaps that permit additions to the list. The basic geographic code formats published in FIPS publications (FIPS PUBs) are (1) States—two digits, (2) counties and county equivalents—three digits, (3) metropolitan areas—four digits; CMSAs and the former SCSAs also have two-digit codes, (4) congressional districts—two digits, (5) foreign geographic entities—two or three digits,; [sic] (6) named populated places, primary county divisions, and other locational entities used to assign codes to places, county subdivisions, and AIANAs—five digits. See also FIPS code.

FIPS See Federal Information Processing Standards.

FIPS code One of a series of codes, issued by the NIST, assigned for the purpose of ensuring uniform identification during computer processes involving geographic entities throughout all Federal Government programs and agencies. See also Federal Information Processing Standards. GlossaryG-23