# improved-un-locodes

**Repository Path**: vangoghken/improved-un-locodes

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: improved-un-locodes
- **Description**: No description available
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: Not specified
- **Default Branch**: main
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2026-04-18
- **Last Updated**: 2026-04-18

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

An enhanced UN/LOCODE dataset with significant improvements:

# Significantly better coordinates
The main reason this project exists: coordinates in [the original UN/LOCODE list](https://github.com/datasets/un-locode) have major problems:

**1. Only 80% of locations have coordinates**

This doesn't just include tiny villages, but world's most important cities like London (GBLON), Madrid (ESMAD), Luxembourg (LULUX) and Milano (ITMIL).

**2. Many coordinates are just wrong**

Quite a few coordinates have typos (ATWIS), but many are just flat out wrong (EGSCN)

This project aims to solve most of these cases by combining the data with data from OpenStreetMap's [Nominatim API](https://nominatim.org/release-docs/latest/api/Overview/) and [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/).

**3. Multiple coordinate formats**

Most UN/LOCODES coordinates look like USNYC: 4042N 07400W. However, entries in Bhutan like BTPDL have decimal coordinates: 26.8128N 89.1903E. This project solves this with 2 columns: the `Coordinates` column now has only the UN/LOCODE style degrees, while the `CoordinatesDecimal` column has a decimal representation.

## CSV with improved locations
All this is solved with [code-list-improved.csv](data/code-list-improved.csv). It has corrected coordinates, all in the same format and way more of them (98.4%).

# A defined hierarchy
Another issue is hierarchy. For example: [DEBHQ](https://unlocode.info/DEBHQ) (Bahrenfeld), is in Hamburg ([DEHAM](https://unlocode.info/DEHAM)), but how would you know these are essentially the same place?

For this, [parents.csv](data/parents.csv) is created, which looks like this:

```
Unlocode,Parent
DEBHQ,DEHAM
```
With this, you can easily find out these are related.

# Actually working aliases
It's impossible to find out that both "Vienna" and "Wien" are in fact the same city with UN/LOCODE [ATVIE](https://unlocode.info/ATVIE). That is, if you use the offical dataset.

Not so much with [aliases-improved.csv](data/aliases-improved.csv), which looks like this:

```
Unlocode,Alias
ATVIE,Wien
ATVIE,Vienna
```

This is much more usable than the [aliases](data/alias.csv) in the original.  Not only because of the improved user-friendlyness, but mostly because of its sheer size. The official dataset has less than 100 aliases, this one has over 575.000.

# About UN/LOCODES
The United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations is a code list mantained by UNECE (a United Nations agency) to facilitate trade. The list is comes from the [UNECE page](http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/welcome.html), released twice a year. However, this dataset is based on [datasets/un-locode](https://github.com/datasets/un-locode), which is already much better than the original (e.g. no more encoding problems).

# Shameless plug
[CargoProbe](https://www.cargoprobe.com) offers the functionalities of this dataset [as an API](https://www.cargoprobe.com/service-un-lode-api/). This also has additional nifty things: like when you only have the city name Rotterdam, it's clever enough to return the data of [NLRTM](https://unlocode.info/NLRTM) instead of [USRAJ](https://unlocode.info/USRAJ).

Their main product is essentially track and trace for shipping containers. Check them out if that interests you.

# License

### UN/LOCODE data
All unlocode data is licensed under the [ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)](http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1-0/).

### Nominatim data
ODbL 1.0. http://osm.org/copyright

### Wikidata
CC-0 (No rights reserved)

### All other contents in this repo
[ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL)](http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1-0/)