SC22/WG20 N941
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Title: Area codes and groupings: the need for a
standard approach
Source: John Clews, United Kingdom.
Status: Personal Contribution
Date: 1 May 2002
Action: For discussion by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20
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CONTENTS
1.
Areas, countries, subdivisions and locations
2.
Scope and application area
3. The
shape of an area standard
4.
Placement of the work in ISO
4.1 Meeting the need
4.2 Previous relevant experience
4.3 Earlier use in applications
5.
Draft text
6.
References
7.
Draft tables (partial example for Europe)
Given
the need to plan on a global basis, by governments, companies,
intergovernmental
bodies and NGOs, a means of area analysis is
increasingly
important.
It is
important to deal with a wide variety of geographic entities,
which
we all interact with, from towns through districts, and upwards
to
countries, and also geographic or political areas or regions,
covering
several countries.
The
proposal below covers areas, and a need for groupings and codes
for
these to be available for use in ICT systems. It also draws on
United
Nations practices: the United Nations and its Specialized
Agencies
have been important in the development of several ISO
standards,
notably UN/CEFACT in Geneva in developing the Locodes
system
[1], which is used in several ISO standards for EDI, and also
the
official ICAO recommendations [2] which are used in the ISO
standard
for machine readable passports.
1.
Areas, countries, subdivisions and locations
The use
of ICT systems by governments, companies,
intergovernmental
bodies and NGOs for a variety of applications has
increased
dramatically, and ICT system providers have built in
various
components which incorporate cultural elements, such as for
countries
(ISO 3166), subdivisions of countries (ISO 3166-1),
languages
(ISO 639), currencies, date and time conventions, etc.
There
are also smaller subdivisions of countries (ISO 3166-1), and
also in
an EDI context LOCODES, or Location Codes, which were
developed
by UN/CEFACT in conjunction with some ISO/IEC JTC1
committees,
and used as base data in some ISO/IEC JTC1 e-commerce
standards,
and which are widely used in electronic data tracking of
transactions
by couriers and other suppliers.
However,
there is little which defines larger areas of the world,
which
can be important in developing systems for global use, as
indicated
below. Nor are the codes for such areas which could be of
use in
ICT systems.
The
only realistic candidate model is that used by the United Nations
Statistical
Office [3] which is internationally available, but this
has
certain limitations:
(a) the
areas defined are very large (many countries in an area);
(b) the
codes are limited to these large areas;
(c)
there is no possibility of changing these areas for specific
applications.
The
draft standard proposed below would overcome these constraints,
but it
would still be possible for the United Nations Statistical
Office
schema (and indeed potentially any other schemas) to be a
profile
of this, much as ISO/IEC 14651 has various profiles, such as
the
European Ordering Rules (ENV 13710) and the Unicode Collation
Algorithm.
2.
Scope and application area
In
devising locales, there is sometimes a need to define an area of
the
world which is not limited to a specific country. Obvious
examples
are Latin America, or Arabic speaking countries. Some such
are
used in proprietary locale mechanisms used by individual
manufacturers
(e.g. having a Latin America "locale") though they are
not
available in any ISO standard which would enable wider use.
Nevertheless,
some information on defining areas of the world is
important
in a variety of contexts.
- For locales, it can enable more detailed
specifications to be
drawn up for specific users or user groups
(e.g. language X, time
zone X for these areas, except time zone Y
applies in the
Easternmost countries of this area group).
- In various EDI systems, it would play a
useful role alongside the
use of ISO 3166, ISO 3166-2 and LOCODEs.
- In statistical analysis it allows
concatenation or separation of
data in order to get a wider picture or a
more specific picture.
- In intergovernmental and in NGO planning,
it would enable
consistent planning on an area basis across
the globe, for
scientific, social and economic development
data, and sharing of
data with other agencies.
- It would be easy to build this into image
maps (in cases where
globes or cartographic maps were used), to
allow navigation round
the world in a simple and consistent
manner, and to relate this to
any other set of data.
The
need for such a standard is therefore demonstrable, and it would
be
particularly useful for standards bodies involved in the Cultural
and
Linguistic Adaptability and User Interface Technical Direction
(CLAUI
TD) which was set up ISO/IEC JTC1, as it could be a way of
describing
specific uses which might apply in several countries,
rather
than having to specify information on a country by country
basis.
3.
The shape of an area standard
One
obvious objection to any such standard is that, while for some
purposes
grouping certain countries together is useful, in other
cases
it can appear controversial to some of the countries concerned,
particularly
if political difficulties exist between countries at any
specific
time.
The
proposal below would provide a standard which would overcome
these
difficulties by enabling a very large number of variations on
any
default specification, with any number of exceptions being
possible.
This would allow ICT systems to be developed, and would
allow
data to be processed, covering a wide variety of different area
divisions.
Such a
standard would provide:
(a) a
mechanism to define an area, and countries within it;
(b)
default data which can be usable as it stands; and
(c)
also sample tailorings of this data.
The
default areas will be useful when having to deal with areas
outside
the experience of the user.
Item
(a) might or might not also include an alphanumeric or
alphabetic
coding mechanism for areas, just as ISO 3166 has an
alphabetic
coding system for countries.
There
would not be any registration issues for this propose new
standard
(unless it was decided to set up a registration agency for
listing
tailorings, for example).
Users
of the new standard would however, need to be aware of any new
registrations
by the Maintenance Agency for ISO 3166. Codes for
representation
of names of countries, however. Stating something
about
the registration mechanism for ISO 3166 might need to be built
into
this standard.
4.
Placement of the work in ISO
4.1
Meeting the need
Work on
ISO in various cultural elements has grown up in various TCs,
for
instance ISO/TC46 for ISO 3166, ISO/TC37 for ISO 639, and various
ISO/IEC
JTC1 TCs for currency, date and time formats, etc.
So the
place for development of this work is where there is a
perceived
need, and it is also important that the SC concerned also
liaises
with other users represented in ISO and in ISO/IEC JTC1.
In
developing its standards, JTC1/SC22/WG20, and bodies like
CEN/TC304,
has suffered at times from the fact that they have had no
way of
influencing the TC to provide requested data elements - for
example,
CEN/TC304's request to the ISO 639 Maintenance Agency for
additional
codes for several European languages remains unanswered,
even
several years later.
If this
is developed within ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG20, this long delay
in
getting things developed is not likely to arise.
4.2
Previous relevant experience
The division
of (a), (b) and (c) above is also analogous to that in
ISO/IEC
FCD 14651 - International String Ordering and Comparison -
Method
for Comparing Character Strings and Description of the
Common
Template Tailorable Ordering, which provides (a) a mechanism,
(b)
default data, and (c) also sample tailorings of that data.
Given
the experience of JTC1/SC22/WG20 in handling (a), (b) and (c)
on a
very large scale in ISO/IEC 14651, JTC1/SC22/WG20 is in a good
position
to develop such a New Work Item.
4.3
Earlier use in applications
Some
earlier versions of this approach have been found useful in
(a)
providing one of several ways to group data for 7,000 languages,
as part of the work of the ISO/TC37/SC2
Language Codes Task Force
which is investigating the feasibility of
extending ISO 639
(not yet complete). That uses mnemonic
area codes, though those
are not an essential part of the proposed
standard, though they
could be useful.
(b)
providing a user interface in navigating a global database of
musicians (currently using a textual
interface, with an image map
interface planned). A pilot version of
this is at
<http://www.sesame.demon.co.uk/pilot091>
That also uses mnemonic area codes, though
again, these are not
an essential part of the proposed
standard, though they could be
useful.
This
experience will shorten the development time for this standard.
5.
Draft text
A draft
can be prepared fairly quickly, within the UK, based on
earlier
work. The draft would describe
(a) a
mechanism to define an area, and countries within it;
(b)
default data which can be usable as it stands; and
(c)
also sample tailorings of this data.
Some
very preliminary work has been done on (a), while work on
(b) and
(c) would draw on use described in 4.3 above. At the same
time,
liaison would also be undertaken with other potential user
groups
which are described in section 2 above.
6.
References
[1]
United Nations, Centre for the Facilitation of Procedures
Practices for Administration, Commerce and
Transport (UN/CEFACT). -
UN/Locode - Code for posts and other
locations.
(Recommendation No. 16, ECE/TRADE/227).
<http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49regin.htm>
[2] International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) -
Machine-Readable Passports, Section III,
Technical
Specifications. - (ICAO Document 9303).
adopted in
ISO/IEC 7501-l : 1997 (E) - Identification
cards -
Machine-readable travel documents Part 1:
Machine readable
passport.
[3]
United Nations Statistics Department - Composition of macro
geographical (continental) regions and
component geographical
regions, revised 16 February 2000.
<http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49regin.htm>.
7.
Draft tables (partial example for Europe)
This
section illustrates potential groupings for (b), based on
4.3.(b)
above, and using Europe as an example
These
further develop area groups defined by the United Nations
Statistical
Office in New York, which are used in dealing with a
large
amount of statistics, although the UN groupings are much more
general
than that proposed below.
However,
of course any of these groupings could be changed by the
tailoring
mechanism for this standard, and different default areas
could
be agreed by JTC1/SC22/WG20 if appropriate.
The
alphanumeric code suggested does not conflict with elements in
any
other ISO standards. However, the actual specification (or even
use) of
any alphanumeric code would need to be agreed by
JTC1/SC22/WG20.
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1st
level of division
A0
AMERICAS; A1 AFRICA; A2 EUROPE;
A3 ASIA; A4 PACIFIC
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2nd
level of division
A2
EUROPE
A22 Northern Europe A23 Northwest Europe
A24 Southwest Europe
A25 Southeast Europe A26 Central Europe A27 Eastern Europe
A28 Russian Europe A29
Turkey/Transcaucasus
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3rd
level of division
A22
Northern Europe
DK Denmark, EE Estonia, FO Faroe
Islands, FI Finland, IS Iceland,
IE Ireland, LV Latvia, LT Lithuania, NO Norway, SE Sweden,
SJ Svalbard and Jan Mayen, GB United Kingdom
A23
Northwest Europe
AT Austria, BE Belgium, FR
France, DE Germany, LI Liechtenstein,
LU Luxembourg, MC Monaco, NL Netherlands, CH Switzerland
A24
Southwest Europe
AD Andorra, GI Gibraltar, VA Holy
See, IT Italy,
MT Malta, SM San Marino, PT
Portugal, ES Spain
A25
Southeast Europe
AL Albania, BA Bosnia and Herzegovina,
HR Croatia,
CY Cyprus, GR
Greece, MK Macedonia (FYROM),
SI Slovenia, YU Yugoslavia
A26
Central Europe
CZ Czech Republic, HU Hungary,
PL Poland, SK Slovakia
A27
Eastern Europe
BY Belarus, BG Bulgaria, MD
Moldova, RO Romania, UA Ukraine
A28
Russian Europe
RU Russian Federation (subdivided by
region)
A29
Turkey/Transcaucasus (Caucasus/Anatolia)
AM Armenia, AZ Azerbaijan, GE Georgia,
TR Turkey,
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END
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