UN/LOCODE

UN/LOCODE, the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations, is a geographic coding scheme developed and maintained by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). UN/LOCODE assigns codes to locations used in trade and transport with functions such as seaports, rail and road terminals, airports, Postal Exchange Office and border crossing points. The first issue in 1981 contained codes for 8,000 locations. The version from 2011 contained codes for about 82,000 locations.

Structure

UN/LOCODEs have five characters. The first two letters code a country by the table defined in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. The three remaining characters code a location within that country. Letters are preferred, but if necessary digits 2 through 9 may be used, excluding "0" and "1" to avoid confusion with the letters "O" and "I" respectively.

For each country there can be a maximum of 17,576 entries using only letters (26×26×26), or 39,304 entries using letters and digits (34×34×34).

For the US, the letter combinations have almost all been exhausted. So in 2006, the Secretariat added 646 entries with a digit as the last character.

Loose consistency with existing IATA airport codes

For airports, the three letters following the country code are not always identical to the IATA airport code. According to the Secretariat note for Issue 2006-2, there are 720 locations showing a different IATA code.

Official UN/LOCODE tables

UN/LOCODEs are released as a table. An individual revision is officially referred to as an "issue". A discussion of the table's structure follows.

Examples

;Explanations:

*   for New York City in the United States. Subdivision is the U.S. state of New York (see ISO 3166-2:US). Function: port, rail, road, airport, postal. IATA code is NYC. Coordinates: .
*   for Berlin (city) in Germany. Subdivision is the German state of Berlin (see ISO 3166-2:DE). Function: port, rail, road, airport, postal. IATA code is BER. Coordinates: .
*   for Berlin-Tegel Airport in Germany. Function: airport. IATA code is TXL.
*   for Paris (city) in France. Subdivision is the French department of Paris (see ISO 3166-2:FR). Function: port, rail, road, postal.
*   for Par in United Kingdom. Subdivision is the English county of Cornwall (see ISO 3166-2:GB). Function: port.
*   for Göteborg (Goteborg without diacritics) in Sweden. Subdivision is the Swedish county of Västra Götaland (see ISO 3166-2:SE). Function: port, airport, postal. The IATA code of XWL indicated in the table is that of a train station in the city centre of Göteborg (though not the Central Station), while the IATA code for the main airport ( Göteborg Landvetter Airport) is actually GOT. It also has a separate reference entry showing an alternate spelling of ''Gothenburg''.

Data fields

The fields are listed in the official order.

Ch (Changes)

:A change from the previous issue is indicated by one of the following characters in the first column:
:   Marked for deletion in the next issue
:   Change in location name (usually spelling)
:   Other changes in the entry (not location)
:   Entry added to the current issue
: =  Reference entry
:   Retained for certain entries in the USA code list ("controlled duplications")

Locode

:The code is represented with a space between the alpha-2 codes of ISO 3166-1 country code and the 3-character element.

Name

:Names of locations should be shown using the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet with, where appropriate, diacritic signs as contained in ISO 10646-1/1993 or ISO 8859-1/1987.

Name Without Diacritics

:The name of the location, but non-practicable Diacritics may be ignored and should not be converted into additional characters(e.g., Göteborg may be read as Goteborg, rather than Goeteborg, Gothenburg, Gotembourg, etc.).
:Can contain an apostrophe, e.g. L'viv

SubDiv (Subdivision)

:The ISO 1 to 3 character alphabetic and/or numeric code for the administrative division (state, province, department, etc.) of the country, as included in ISO 3166-2/1998. Only the latter part of the complete ISO 3166-2 code element (after the hyphen) is shown.

Function

:Each defined function gets a classifier; the most important are:
:* 1 = port (for any kind of waterborne transport)
:* 2 = rail terminal
:* 3 = road terminal
:* 4 = airport
:* 5 = postal exchange office
:* 6 = Inland Clearance Depot – ICD or "Dry Port", "Inland Clearance Terminal", etc.
:* 7 = fixed transport functions (e.g. oil platform)"; the classifier "7" is reserved for this function. Noting that the description "oil pipeline terminal" would be more relevant, and could be extended to cover also electric power lines and ropeway terminals.
:* B = Border crossing function
:* 0 = function not known, to be specified

Status

:Indicates the status of the entry by a 2-character code. The following codes are used at present:
:*AA: Approved by competent national government agency
:*AC: Approved by Customs Authority
:*AF: Approved by national facilitation body
:*AI: Code adopted by international organisation (IATA or ECLAC)
:*AM: Approved by the UN/LOCODE Maintenance Agency
:*AQ: Entry approved, functions not verified
:*AS: Approved by national standardisation body
:*RL: Recognised location - Existence and representation of location name confirmed by check against nominated gazetteer or other reference work
:*RN: Request from credible national sources for locations in their own country
:*RQ: Request under consideration
:*UR: Entry included on user's request; not officially approved
:*RR: Request rejected
:*QQ: Original entry not verified since date indicated
:*XX: Entry that will be removed from the next issue of UN/LOCODE

Date

:The date the location was added or updated: 0207 is July 2002, 9501 is January 1995, etc.
:Note that the edition published in 2008 uses the value 0701 for additions, while in other cases the exact month is used like 9710, 0212.

IATA

:For correlation purposes, the IATA code for the location is marked if different from the second part of the UN/LOCODE.

Coordinates

:Some entries have coordinates in the database. They are represented as: ddmmN dddmmW, ddmmS dddmmE, etc.

Remarks

:The remarks column can among other things contain a hint to what specifically was changed (See data field - "Change").

Availability

Availability
UN/LOCODE is available on th
UNECE website
where the latest release of UNLOCODE directories and background documents are listed. Complete UN/LOCODE code list may be downloaded in the format of.mdb (MS Access database), .txt (text file) and .csv (Comma-separated values). HTML pages are also displayed on the website by countries.

Data Maintenance Requests

UN/LOCODE Data Maintenance Request system is web-based (http://apps.unece.org/unlocode/), which enables registered users to submit online requests for new UN/LOCODE entry modifications.

The system provides online functions for
:*Registration of users and password retrieval
:*Submission of requests for new UN/LOCODE entries
:*Submission of requests for modification changes in existing UN/LOCODE entries
:*A guide to explain the use of the system

Errors

In 2006-07 for Irbil was added while Arbil with almost the same coordinates existed. In the 2007 edition gets marked for deletion and Erbil International Apt is added to the database, but with a different coordinates, reflecting the distance between airport and city. The error is to delete ABL and to insert IRB.

Occasionally locations are listed twice; this is not necessarily an error. In issue 2006-1, San Miguel de Tucumán (functions 2,3) was added while Tucumán (function 1) already was in the list. The coordinates are with very little deviation the same. Also in 2006-1, San Salvador de Jujuy was added (function 4) while Jujuy (functions 1,2,3,5) already existed.

US TRI + US BSO, same coor and within TRI different coor

US BFS Bristol VA RL -234---- 0212 3636N 08211W cf US JCI, US BSO, US TRI
US BSO Bristol Apt TN RL -234---- 0212 3635N 08210W cf US JCI Apt, US BSO Apt, US TRI Apt
US TRI Bristol-Johnson City-Kingsport Apt TN RL -234---- 0212 3635N 08210W cf US JCI, US BSO, US TRI
US TRI Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol Apt TN RL -234---- 0212 3635N 08210W cf US JCI, US TRI, US BSO
US TRI Kingsport-Bristol-Johnson City Apt TN RL -234---- 0212 3635N 08210W cf US JCI, US TRI, US BSO
US TRI Kingsport Apt TN AI ---4---- 0212 3632N 08233W cf US BSO Apt, US JCI Apt

2009-1

The 2009-1 release added several entries for Ukraine where the longitude is off by a few orders of magnitude. Ranging from 23230E to 38829E, they are outside what would constitute an eastern longitude. Ivano-Frankivsk and Chuhuiv have two entries now, along with Nikolayev. For all three, the romanized spelling varies.
+ UA IVA Ivano Frankivsk 26–3----- RL 0901 4855N 24422E
UA IFO Ivano-Frankovsk ---4---- AI 0001
+ UA CHU Chuguev 63–3----- RL 0901 4950N 36411E
+ UA CGV Chuguyev 63 -23----- RL 0901 4950N 03641E
UA NLV Nikolaev ---4---- AI 0001
UA NIK Nikolayev 1------- AI 9501

Other entries with wrong coordinates:
+ UA BOH Bohorodchany 26–3----- RL 0901 4848N 24321E
+ UA IZI Iziaslav 7 --3----- RL 0901 5606N 26492E
+ UA KAM Kamianets-Podilskyi 68–3----- RL 0901 4841N 26345E
+ UA KHA Khartsyzk 14–3----- RL 0901 4802N 38829E
+ UA KHM Khmelnytskyi 68–3----- RL 0901 4950N 36411E
+ UA KIR Kirovohrad 35–3----- RL 0901 4830N 32157E
+ UA KON Konstantinovka—3----- RL 0901 4722N 32170E
+ UA MIR Mironovka 14–3----- RL 0901 4829N 38150E
+ UA MYR Myronivka 32–3----- RL 0901 4939N 30590E
+ UA POL Nikopol 12–3----- RL 0901 4734N 34240E
+ UA LAH Nova Vodolaha 63–3----- RL 0901 4943N 35520E
+ UA OVI Ovidiopol 51–3----- RL 0901 4616N 30260E
+ UA CRY Ripky 74 -----6-- RL 0901 5148N 31600E
+ UA TAL Talne 71–3----- RL 0901 4853N 30421E
+ UA TRU Truskavets 46–3----- RL 0901 4917N 23300E
+ UA VOR Vorzel 32–3----- RL 0901 5033N 30090E
+ UA YAV Yavoriv 46–3----- RL 0901 4956N 23230E
+ UA ZHO Zhovkva—3----- RL 0901 5040N 23580E

For the US more codes with one letter and the number 9 alone were added. For the range H to M they are:
+ US R9 Harpersville VA—3----- RL 0901 4313N 07626W
+ US T9 Henrietta MO -23----- RL 0901 3914N 09356W
+ US U9 Hugo MN -----6-- RL 0901 4509N 09259W
+ US D9 Indian Head MD -----6-- RL 0901 3836N 07709W
+ US F9 Lindenwood IL -----6-- RL 0901 4203N 08901W
+ US T9 Mantua OH -----6-- RL 0901 4117N 08113W
+ US W9 Matthews MO -----6-- RL 0901 3645N 08935W
US L9 Maylene AL—3----- RL 0701 3312N 08652W
+ US N9 Milan NM—3----- RL 0901 3510N 10753W
US D9 Minidoka ID -23----- RL 0701 4245N 11330W
US C9 Mitchell MS—3----- RL 0701 3443N 08851W
+ US R9 Morgan PA -----6-- RL 0901 3955N 07939W
+ US V9 Morrisville NJ—3--6-- RL 0901 3958N 07503W
US H9 Mount Hope OH—3--6-- RL 0701 4037N 08147W
US F9 Munroe Falls OH -23----- RL 0701 4109N 08126W

Problems

Some entries do not have coordinates, so it is not clear where they actually refer to. If an IATA code changes, then the UN/LOCODE could also be considered to have changed.
MS MNI Montserrat Montserrat AI ---4---- 9601
* Gerald's Airport from 2005, ICAO: TRPG
* W. H. Bramble Airport until 1997, ICAO: formerly TRPM

For Kochi / Cochin the postal function has KOC (1998) and all other functions have COK (2003).
IN KOC Kochi Kochi AI ----5--- 9805
IN COK Cochin Cochin KL AA 1234-6-- 0307 0958N 07614E

Release history

;Notes:
:   Additions to the current issue
:   Other changes
:   Change in location (spelling or other)
:   Entries marked for deletion in the next issue

See also

* List of airports by IATA code
* List of IATA-indexed train stations

References

External links

United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT)


United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), UN/LOCODE








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Geocodes
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
Country codes