Re: city country municipality etc...

Bryan, hello.

On 22 Nov 2017, at 10:54, Bryan Warren wrote:

> Hi all, could anyone point me to a vocabulary for geo admin divisions 
> in
> countries? specifically European countries. for instance, country X 
> and
> then how the territory is divided. in the US it would be states, 
> capital
> city of state, then cities in the state, towns, etc. As Europe is not 
> one
> single country... I am sure there must be on for UK, France, Germany, 
> etc.
> Could someone point me to such vocabulary?

ISO-3166 is the standard which defines the well-known two-letter country 
codes, but it also defines codes for 'administrative subdivisions' of 
those countries.  For example, in the US there are codes for

1 district (en) / district fédéral (fr)
6 outlying area (en) / zone éloignée (fr)
50 state (en) / État (fr)

List source: United States Geological Survey Geographic Names 
Information System (http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/index.html)

Code source: U.S. Postal Code

and in the UK, rather less tidily organised:

32 council area (en) / zone de conseil (fr)
27 two-tier county (en) / comté à 2 niveaux (fr)
3 nation (en) / nation (fr)
11 district (en) / district (fr)
78 unitary authority (en) / autorité unitaire (fr)
36 metropolitan district (en) / district métropolitain (fr)
32 London borough (en) / arrondissement de Londres (fr)
1 city corporation (en) / corporation urbaine (fr)
1 province (en) / province (fr)
3 country (en) / pays (fr)

List source: "Gazetteer for the Reorganised Statistical Regions and 
Local Authorities in the United Kingdom", Office for National 
Statistics, June 1997; corrections notified by BSI 2000-11-27; BGN/PCGN 
2008, 2009 and 2011; www.doeni.gov.uk; www.nidirect.gov.uk

Code source: British Standard BS 6879; ISO 3166/MA (*)

[whole lotta History in those 'administrative subdivisions'...]

These lists are dynamic.

This doesn't go down to the detailed level that you described, involving 
cities and towns, but it would give you a consistent coarse-grain 
top-level, and probably pointers to more specific information.

See <https://www.iso.org/new-way-of-using-iso-3166.html> and the search 
interface at <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search/code/>

A few years ago, I did some work on assembling the 2-letter codes, plus 
some other sources of country-grouping information, into a countries 
ontology.  It's pretty ragged, but I'd be happy to share it if it seemed 
useful as a starting point.

Best wishes,

Norman


-- 
Norman Gray  :  https://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK

Received on Wednesday, 22 November 2017 11:55:08 UTC