Areas (2): Area lists, and Arrangement details

Areas (2): Area lists, and Arrangement details

1. Background

This relates to my previous email with the subject Locales, areas and
regions (1) which has a section entitled: Areas (1): Principles

The arrangement of areas is stable, and also allows the potential for
user options. It's based on the area groupings (though not on the
internal UN codes) which have been used by the United Nations
Statistical Office over  several decades - see the UN document
"Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions and component
geographical regions" <http://www.un.org/Depts/unsd/methods/m49regin.htm>.

In comparison to the UN list, what follows has in a few cases been
subdivided into smaller groups, to take account of specific
political, economic and cultural affinities.

The information is compact and hierarchical, so that it can be shown
as a single menue or page, in a GUI or in a browser, which allows
users to select a more detailed breakdown down to country level, thus:

        Area   ->  Country -> Region within country, etc.
e.g.    W Asia ->  Iraq    -> Basra [etc].

Codes for the smaller level elements would be based on ISO 3166,
ISO 3166-2 (Regions within countries) and/or LOCODE information. For
LOCODES (a widely used but still under-used set of data elements),
see especially UN/ECE/CEFACT - "UN/LOCODE - CODE FOR PORTS AND OTHER
LOCATIONS" (Recommendation No. 16, Issue 2001-2)
<http://www.unece.org/trade/untdid/download/99trd227.pdf>,
together with other linked web documents from that site.

What's specified below is a default listing: others are possible.
Gaps in Area numbering can be used for personal preferences for the
specific application: A-0 and A-1 combinations are generally left
unspecified for this purpose, as well as some others.

It's also suggested that an initial entry A00 is reserved for use in
any declaration, to allow specification of which area elements may
follow, which differ from a default.


2. Detail

The basic continental groupings

A0 AMERICAS;  A1 AFRICA;  A2 EUROPE;  A3 ASIA;  A4 PACIFIC

are subdivided into the following areas:

 A0- AMERICAS
 A02 North America        A03 Caribbean
 A04 Central America (N)  A05 Central America (S)
 A06 S America (NW)       A07 South America (NE)
 A08 Luso-America         A09 South America (S)

 A1- AFRICA
 A12 North Africa         A14 East Africa          A15 West Africa
 A16 Central Africa       A17 Southern Africa

 A2- EUROPE
 A22 Northern Europe      A23 Northwest Europe     A24 Southwest Europe
 A25 Central Europe       A26 Southern Europe      A27 Eastern Europe
 A28 Turkey/Transcaucasian Europe                  A29 Russian Europe

 A3- ASIA
 A32 Russian Asia         A33 Central Asia         A34 Western Asia
 A35 South  Asia          A38 East Asia            A39 Mainland SE Asia

 A4- PACIFIC
 A42 Insular SE Asia
 A43 Australia            A44 New Zealand          A45 Papua New Guinea
 A46 Melanesia            A47 Micronesia           A48 Polynesia

The following is also suggested (in line with UN/ECLAC code and
UN/LOCODE use):

 A8- MARITIME TERRITORIES
 A81 South Atlantic/Antarctic territories
 A83 Indian Ocean/Southern Ocean Territories

Comments are welcome

Best regards

John Clews

--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Email: Webbing@sesame.demon.co.uk
tel: +44 1423 888 432;

Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
Committee Member of ISO/TC37: Terminology

Received on Friday, 9 November 2001 17:06:07 UTC