HIS Registry of Geography

Table of contents

1. Overview
2. Code tables
3. Other tables
4. Change management
5. Change history
6. Known Limitations
7. Distribution

1. Overview

The function of the Registry of Geography (ROG) is to document a set of standardized codes used for identifying geopolitical areas. The present code covers three levels of political geography: World (Level 0), Countries and Areas of Special Sovereignty (Level 1), and first-level administrative divisions within countries (Level 2). Codes at Levels 1 and 2 are an extension of the codes used by the United States National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and generally referred to as Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 10-4 and subsequent changes. The base code set used here is obtained by direct download fron NIMA and contains codes which have not yet been published in the formal FIPS 10-4 standard. The registry includes cross-references to other coding and naming systems, including the ISO 3166 standard for country names. The registry is designed to be extensible to lower levels of politcal subdivisions within countries and to accomodate intermediate levels of political subdivisions.

The registry contains a code table, two supplementary tables, and a change history table:

• ROG_Political: Code for Geopolitical Regions

  A code in this represents a specific, politically-defined land area. This is an important distinction: many other codes, including the commonly used ISO codes used in the Internet domain naming system, are codes for names of political regions. In such codes, major changes in the land area of a political unit may not be reflected by a code change, while a change in only the name of a region may artificially produce code change. In recent history, such changes have resulted in the same code referring, over time, to both the former West Germany and the present, unified Germany, (a much larger entity), or, in other case, to both the former Yugoslavia and current remainder state of Serbia and Montenegro (a much smaller entity). The HIS code, and its underlying NIMA/FIPS code, intend to change codes if, and only if, there are substantive changes in the land area represented by the code.

• ROG_PoliticalXref: Cross Reference to Alternate Names and Codes

  Provides an cross reference to alternate names and codes for geopolitical areas. The cross-reference provides means for describing less than exact correspondence between different coding systems.

• ROG Sources: Code and Name Sources

  Indentifies underlying sources for code and cross-reference information.

• ROG_Political Change History

  Documents the history of changes to the code set for geopolitcal regions.

The tables relate to each other as indicated the following diagram:

It is anticipated that other HIS registries will use these codes preferentially in discribing the geographic locations of the entities they describe.

2. Code tables

The registry contains just one code table: ROG_Political.

ROG_Political: Code for Geopolitical Regions

The domain of the categories for this code set politically-defined land areas of the world. Codes of variable length using printable ASCII characters are defined at different levels of political geography: at present, the level 0 (World) code is one character long, level 1 (countries and areas of special sovereignty) codes are two characters long, level 2 (first-level political subdivisions within countries) are four characters long, with the first two characters being the code for the country of which the first level subdivision is a part. Our intent wherever reasonably possible is to continue this pattern to lower levels of political geography, adding two characters at each level to a maximum code length of 16 characters. We recognize the possibility that situations could theoretically arise where more political subdivisions exist at a particular level than can be encoded with two additional characters. The tilde (~) character appearing anywhere in a code is reserved to indicate that the code beyond the tilde departs from the standard two-characters-per-level hierarchical scheme. At levels 1 and 2, where the majority of codes are derived from the NIMA/FIPS 10-4 coding system, which uses two upper-case alpha letters for the code at level 1 (countries and areas of special sovereignty) and suffixes two additional digits or uppercase letters at level 2 (first level political subdivisions of level 1 entities, or ADM1 in the NIMA feature designation system), codes assigned by GMI to supplement the NIMA codes will be recognizable by using characters not used by NIMA, i.e. lower case letters or other printable ASCII characters for the portions of the hierarchical code created by GMI.

The code table for ROG_Political contains the following four columns:

The SQL statement for creating this table is as follows:

CREATE TABLE ROG_Political (
  Level     decimal(2.1) NOT NULL,
  Code      char(16) NOT NULL,
  Status    char(1) NOT NULL,
  Name      varchar(128) NOT NULL,
  Name_Src  char(8) NOT NULL,
  NameD     varchar(254) NOT NULL,
  NameDchar char(1) NOT NULL,
  NIMA_Reg 	integer)

For instance, the entries for the United Arab Emirates appear as follows:

Level Code Status CodeSrc  Name                 NameSrc  NameD                          NameDChar NIMA_Reg
===== ==== ====== ======== ==================== ======== ============================== ========= ========
1.0   AE   C      NIMA_C_L United Arab Emirates NIMA_C_L United Arab Emirates           I         0
2.0   AE01 C      NIMA_A_L Abu Zaby             NIMA_A_L Abū Z̧aby H         3
2.0   AE02 C      NIMA_A_L `Ajman               NIMA_A_L ‘Ajmān           H         3
2.0   AE03 C      NIMA_A_L Dubayy               NIMA_A_L Dubayy                         H         3
2.0   AE04 C      NIMA_A_L Al Fujayrah          NIMA_A_L Al Fujayrah                    H         3
2.0   AE05 C      NIMA_A_L Ra's al Khaymah      NIMA_A_L Ra's al Khaymah                H         3
2.0   AE06 C      NIMA_A_L Ash Shariqah         NIMA_A_L Ash Shāriqah            H         3
2.0   AE07 C      NIMA_A_L Umm al Qaywayn       NIMA_A_L Umm al Qaywayn                 H         3

If you are viewing this document in a Unicode-capable browser and have the "TITUS Cyberbit Basic" font installed, you should see the corret rendering (with a bar over the u and a hook under the Z) of the Unicode string for Abu Zaby here: Abū Z̧aby. If you have only the standard Arial Unicode MS font installed, you will probably have one or more missing diacritics.

2. Other tables

The registry contains two supplementary tables.

ROG_PoliticalXref: ROG Political Cross-Reference Index

This supplementary table offers an cross-reference between the HIS codes and names for geopolitcal region and alternate codes and names.

The ROG Cross-Reference Index contains the following four columns:

The SQL statement for creating this table is as follows:

CREATE TABLE ROG_PoliticalXref(
Code char(16)NOT NULL,
CodeRel char(1)NOT NULL,
AltCode varchar(45),
Source char(8) NOT NULL,
NameType char(2)NOT NULL,
Name varchar(128)NOT NULL,
NameD varchar(254)NOT NULL,
NameDChar char(1)NOT NULL,
NIMA_Reg integer)

The following shows the entries in the name index for Tromelin Island, an entity with an assigned HIS Code, but which is considered part of Réunion in the ISO coding scheme.:

Code CodeRel AltCode Source NameType Name            NameD	         NameDChar NIMA_Reg
TE   <       RE      ISO_A2 CS       Reunion         Réunion         I         0
TE   <       REU     ISO_A3 CS       Reunion         Réunion         I         0
TE   =       TE      NIMA   C        Tromelin Island Tromelin Island H         1 
TE   =       TE      NIMA   N        Ile Tromelin    Île Tromelin    H         1

We see that TE also has two alternate names originating from the NIMA names table, one a conventional English name and one the local (French) name. Each of these is represented in both diacritic-stripped and diacritical form. Both Name and NameD fields will be populated even if the name contains no characters with diacritics.

ROG_Sources: Sources for Geographic Names and Codes

This supplementary table identifies the sources of names and codes used in other tables of the ROG.

The SQL statement for creating this table is as follows:

CREATE TABLE ROG_Sources (
   Source  char(8) NOT NULL,
   Description varchar(128) NOT NULL,
   URL varchar(254),
   Notes varchar(254))

The following shows the entries in the name index for the three typical sources. Notes field is word wrapped for presentation here, but continuous in data.:

Source   Description                                   URL                                            Notes                          
-------- -----------                                   ----------------------                         -----
HIS      Codes/Names assigned by HIS Steward		   http://www.gmi.org/HIS
NIMA_C_L NIMA GeoNet Names Server Country Lookup table http://gnpswww.nima.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp From URL indicated, choose
                                                                                                      Country Codes under
                                                                                                      "Lookup Tables", enter blank
                                                                                                      form.
NIMA_A_L NIMA GeoNet Names Server ADM1 Lookup table    http://gnpswww.nima.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp From URL indicated, choose
                                                                                                      "ADM1 Codes" under "Lookup 
                                                                                                      Tables", enter blank form. 
                                                                                                      Note that names are in
                                                                                                      proprietary NIMA code sets.

4. Change management

This section defines the process that the registry steward will follow to maintain the registry.

Governing philosophy

Additions or changes will be made to the when the submitter can demonstrate that a code is needed to describe a validly existing (either present or historical) geographic region not represented in the existing code, or that the name(s) associated with a code are in error. In keeping with the philosophy of having a code represent a specific geographic region, codes will not be changed simply to have a better mnemonic relationship to the current name of a region.

How to make a change request

If you believe any of the information in the is in error, wish to have additional codes assigned, send your proposed change by e-mail to ROG_Steward@gmi.org, by fax to +1-719-548-7459, or by mail to ROG Steward, Global Mapping International, 15435 Gleneagle Dr Ste 201, Colorado Springs CO 80921, USA. Be sure to report the source of your information and the relationship of the regions for which codes are requested to regions already coded in the HIS system. If at all possible, particularly when requesting assignment of codes for a major rearrangement of political subdivisions or a level of subdivisions not previously assigned codes, provide a URL to an authoritative site giving preferred local names of the new subdivisions in Latin characters (with diacritics if used locally). Sites including maps of the regions are strongly preferred, as they will clearly show the spatial relationship with existing regions. If submitting requests for codes by mail, if at all possible include a printed form of the region names for which codes are requested, a floppy disk or CD-ROM with the same information, and if at all possible an authoritative map showing the boundaries of the regions for which codes are requested.

How change requests are processed

In straighforward cases (i.e. situations where the names of regions for which codes are requested are in machine-readable form, documented by authoritative sources, and undisputed), GMI will generally provide new codes within three weeks. Additional time will be required if extensive research, verification, manual key entry, or character code conversion is required; in these cases we will notify you within three weeks of your submission of the expected time required for code assignment.

How updates are made

The registry will be updated and posted whenver requested changes are made. We will also update the HIS standard to conform with NIMA standards whenever we become aware of changes at a country level, or at least once per year. The most recent version will always be available for download from this page.

What to do in the meantime

The plus symbol (+) will never be assigned as part of code at any level, and are reserved for local use. Thus, if you need a code for second-level political subdivisions within an existing first-level subdivision XX01, you could encode the first one XX01+A and increment the final character as needed to code all new areas.

5. Change history

The registry contains just one change history table.

ROG_PoliticalChangeHistory

All changes to ROG_Political reported in ROG_PoliticalChangeHistory. This table is cumulative, listing all changes to successive versions of the registry. The table has the following four columns:

Note that there is not a change type for the case of narrowing the meaning of a code, such as when the region denoted by one code is split into two regions. In such a case, the original code is retired, and two new codes are added. In this way, the user of the code set is assured that once a code has been used to tag an item of data, it will continue to be the right code to use for as long as the code remains an active member of the code set.

The SQL statement for creating the change history table is as follows:

CREATE TABLE ROG_PoliticalChangeHistory (
   Code         varchar(16) NOT NULL,
   Type         char(1) NOT NULL,
   Date         char(10) NOT NULL,
   Description  varchar(255) )

The change history table holds the cumulative list of all changes that have every been made to the registry. Thus it may be queried to learn the complete history of a given code, or to learn all the changes that have been made since a given date. For instance, the following SQL query would be used to find out what changes have occurred since the beginning of 2002:

SELECT * FROM ROG_PoliticalChangeHistory WHERE Date >=2002-01-01

For a site that has used ROG_Political codes in its own database, an important use of the change history table is to discover codes used in its data that are now obsolete and thus need to be changed. These will be only the codes that have been retired. Thus a full list of all data records needing to be changed can be found by doing a JOIN on the change history table. For instance, if the column named code in MyTable holds an ROG_Political code, then the following SQL statement will select all records that need to be changed due to changes to the code set since the beginning of 2002:

SELECT * FROM MyTable as M
JOIN ROG_PoliticalChangeHistory as C ON M.code=C.Code
WHERE C.Type='R' AND C.Date >=2002-01-01

Note that the Description field of the joined result set will describe what needs to be done to bring the offending code up-to-date.

6. Known Limitations

The following limitations are known in the current code set, and are expected to be addressed in the future:

• No political subdivisions below ROG level 2 (first level administrative subdivisions) are included.
• No alternate name and code information is provided for level 2 entities.
• Each country has a listing of the form XX00 defined at Level 2, with a name of "<country name> (general)". These are included in the NIMA code tables, but seem redundant. Our intention, unless we find some support for the retention of these codes, is to retire them in all cases except those where a level 1 entity has no discernable first-level subdivisions.

7. Distribution

A complete distribution of the includes:

• ROG.htm (this document)
• ROG_Relationships.gif (the entity-relationship diagram)
• three (four in future editions) tab-delimited data tables:
  • ROG_Politial.tab
  • ROG_PoliticalXref.tab
  • ROG_Sources.tab
  • ROG_PoliticalChangeHistory.tab (empty and omitted in 2002-06-23 version)

The following versions are available:

• ROG 2002-06-23.zip