In today's world, UN/LOCODE is a topic that has gained great relevance in different areas of society. From politics and economics, to culture and technology, UN/LOCODE has captured the attention of millions of people around the world. With its impact on people's daily lives and its influence on global decision-making, UN/LOCODE has become a constant point of interest for researchers, opinion leaders and ordinary citizens alike. In this article, we will explore the various facets of UN/LOCODE and analyze its impact on different aspects of modern life.
This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(June 2023)
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.
SE GOT 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:
X 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.).
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)
X 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
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
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
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
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
2356
106
20
16
2498
2016-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2016-1 includes 104 848 entries. "
2016-2
2016-12-22
1631
284
23
40
1978
2016-2 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2016-2 includes 107 010 entries."
2017-1
2017-07-13
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
216
134
1
13
364
2022-1 UNLOCCODE SecritariatNotes.pdf: "UN/LOCODE 2022-1 main code list has now 116 097 entries."