UN/LOCODE, the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations, or in a more simplified form United Nations location code, 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 offices, 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 Example of locations as shown in Issue 2006-2 Ch LOCODE Name NameWoDiacritics SubDiv Function Status Date IATA Coordinates Remarks US NYC New York New York NY AI 0401 4042N 07400W DE BER Berlin Berlin BE AF 0207 5231N 01323E DE TXL Berlin-Tegel Apt Berlin-Tegel Apt BE AF 9501 FR PAR Paris Paris 75 AF 9501 GB PAR Par Par CON AF 9501 SE GOT Göteborg Goteborg O AI 0207 XWL IN TRV Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram KL AI 1207 TRV 0829N 07655E
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. 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 the 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
Release history Notes Additions to the current issue Other changes Change in location (spelling or other) Entries marked for deletion in the next issue Issue Date Entries Changes Notes + ¦ # X Total 2002-1 2002 35,460 2,503 597 100 24 3,224 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 34,766 2002-2 2002-07-29 36,005 1,235 252 93 6 1,586 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 35,977 2003-1 2002-12-20 38,000 707 523 2,779 2 4,011 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 36,678 2003-2 2003-08-01 40,000 2,402 1,099 283 324 4,108 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 39,078 2004-1 2004-02-18 47,725 1,958 694 208 167 3,027 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 40,712 2004-2 2004-07-27 50,000 1,707 87 26 5 1,825 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 42,252 2005-1 2005-02-28 50,000 2,291 196 46 16 2,549 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 44,538 2005-2 2005 50,000 929 178 55 8 1,170 Based on 2006-1, entries should be 45,451 2006-1 2006-06-09 48,553 3,110 42 43 11 3,206 2006-2 2007-04-30 54,705 6,400 79 15 157 6,651 2007 2008-03-20 58,875 4,327 753 153 24 5,257 2009-1 2009-09-23 71,665 13,271 0 0 8 13,279 2009-2 2010-02-08 76,375 4,377 347 85 165 4,974 2010-1 2010-10-29 79,973 3,800 121 32 55 4,008 2010-2 2010-12-18 81,464 1,538 23 0 47 1,608 2011-1 2011-09-22 82,358 567 654 1,819 477 3,517 2011-2 2012-02-28 83,287 1,655 0 7 0 1,662 loc112sec.pdf: "main code list has now over 84 000 entries" 2012-1 2012-09-14 88,300 5,311 495 142 3 5,951 The loc121txt/loc121sec.pdf says: "UN/LOCODE 2012-1 includes 83 287 entries." 2012-2 2013-03-07 90,645 2,299 479 221 116 3,115 The loc122sec.pdf says: "main code list has now over 90 000 entries and the database contains a total of over 100 000 records", "2012-2 includes 90 645 entries" 2013-1 2013-07-05 95,721 4,709 503 97 2,175 7,484 The loc131sec.pdf says: "2013-1 main code list has now over 90 000 entries and the database contains a total of over 100 000 records", "2013-1 includes 95 721 entries" 2013-2 2013-12-20 95,066 1,518 1,482 36 55 3,091 2015-1 2015-07-06 100,696 2,066 513 34 122 2735 2015-1_UNLOCODE_SecretariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2015-1 main code list has now 100 969 entries." 2015-2 2015-12-17 103,034 2187 531 90 58 2866 2015-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2015-2 main code list has now 103 034 entries." 2016-1 2016-07-01 104,848 2356 106 20 16 2498 2016-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2016-1 includes 104 848 entries. " 2016-2 2016-12-22 107,010 1631 284 23 40 1978 2016-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2016-2 includes 107 010 entries." 2017-1 2017-07-13 108,170 1201 89 45 55 1390 2017-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2017-1 main code list has now 108 170 entries." 2017-2 2017-12-21 108,502 928 225 13 18 1184 2017-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2017-2 main code list has now 108 502 entries." 2018-1 2018-07-02 110,361 1396 438 98 90 2022 2018-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2018-1 main code list has now 110 361 entries." 2018-2 2018-12-21 111,486 1252 52 39 221 1564 2018-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2018-2 main code list has now 111 486 entries." 2019-1 2019-07-05 111,513 258 4401 1289 121 6069 2019-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2019-1 main code list has now 111 513 entries." 2019-2 2019-12-12 111,522 121 159 23 25 328 2019-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2019-2 main code list has now 111 522 entries." 2020-1 2020-07-01 111,897 400 27 14 13 454 2020-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2020-1 main code list has now 111 897 entries." 2020-2 2020-12-15 112,151 267 76 25 14 382 2020-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2020-2 main code list has now 112 151 entries." 2021-2 2021-12-13 115,989 3698 1289 888 108 5983 2021-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2021-2 main code list has now 115 989 entries." 2022-1 2022-07-08 116,097 216 134 1 13 364 2022-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2022-1 main code list has now 116 097 entries."
See also Lists of airports by IATA and ICAO code List of IATA-indexed railway stations
References
External links United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and E-business(UN/CEFACT) UN/LOCODE, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), UN/LOCODE UN/LOCODE Code List download (latest version) Location code list by country and territory * Country subdivisions *