Country names
Country Names
Summary
A synthesis spreadsheet of the codes is provided
HERE (GCMD not included)
Country Names -
Greg Reed's PPT Presentation
Issue |
GCMD |
ICES/IOC |
ISO (ISO Former) |
NODC |
WOD |
WWW |
No. of States |
N/A |
198 |
244 (29) |
200 |
141 |
249 |
Coding Schema |
None; names of geographic locations in hierarchical
fashion, in these major categories:
CONTINENTS
REGIONS
OCEANS
SOLID EARTH
SPACE
VERTICAL LOCATION
|
Sequential numbers to 99, followed by 2-letter codes |
A two-letter code which is recommended as the general purpose code, a
three-letter code which has better mnenomic properties and a numeric-3 code
which can be useful if script independence of the codes is important.
The two-letter codes are considered here.
|
Very similar to ICES/IOC |
Very similar to ICES/IOC and NODC, but omits many landlocked states |
2-letter codes, almost identical to ISO |
Code Re-Cycling |
N/A |
N/A |
ISO code deprecation practices moving from ISO3166-1 to 3166-3 need
to be documented (3166-1 2-byte code replaced by a 3166-3 4-byte code then
the 2-byte code is recycled e.g. CS Czechoslovakia to Serbia and Montenegro
to �available for reuse�)." |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
Content Governance |
Standard GCMD |
BODC-served list, taken from the ICES web site. ICES had assumed
governance from IODE GETADE until Harry Dooley relinquished RNODC-Formats.
Since then it has been formally ungoverned. Unclear whether it is
systematically maintained now. |
Very formal procedures described for each ISO number |
Internal/Informal |
Internal/informal |
Formal procedures under the W3C? |
Primary Standards for Consideration
-
GCMD - From
http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Resources/valids/location.html
-
ICES - From
http://www.ices.dk
-
IOC - From
http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/client/vocabServer.jsp
- ISO - First published in 1974, it is has since then become one of the
world's most popular and most widely used standard solution for coding country
names.
- ISO 3166: Codes for the representation of names of countries and
their subdivisions
-
Table - From
http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/client/vocabServer.jsp - covers 244
entities.
- Publisher:
http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists.htm
- ISO 3166-3: Code for formerly used names of countries
-
Table - From
http://vocab.ndg.nerc.ac.uk/client/vocabServer.jsp -
- Publisher:
http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/background_on_iso_3166/iso_3166-3.htm
Additional Resources
-
NODC - From
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/General/NODC-datafmts.html
-
WOD - From
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD05/codes05.html
References
-
Wikipedia: Internet List of [WWW] Top-Level Domains - From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
|