Country codes – which code set to use?

[heidivanparys]

It seems to me that the descriptions regarding country codes using in the properties below are not consistent.

• AdministrativeBoundary.country
• AdministrativeUnit.country
• MaritimeBoundary.country
• MaritimeZone.country
• VectorStatisticalUnit.country

The country code is defined in the INSPIRE Generic Conceptual Model and is available in the Interinstitutional style guide.

In the application schemas (au, su-vector, mu), the country properties have gmd:Country_PropertyType as type. For example, from https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/schemas/au/4.0/AdministrativeUnits.xsd:

<element name="country" type="gmd:Country_PropertyType">
<annotation>
<documentation>
-- Name -- country -- Definition -- Two-character country code according to the Interinstitutional style guide published by the Publications Office of the European Union.
</documentation>
</annotation>
</element>

In a GML instance document, this gives, e.g. for Denmark:

   <au:country>
    <gmd:Country codeList="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codeList/CountryCode" codeListValue="DK"/>
   </au:country>

So because gmd:Country_PropertyType is used, the practice of using XLink is not used, so the encoding of country is not something like this:

   <au:country xlink:href="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codeList/CountryCode/DK" />

although this practice is described in Guidelines for the encoding of spatial data:

When going to https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode, the definition reads “Country code as defined in the Interinstitutional style guide published by the Publications Office of the European Union.”, but the document referred to at https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/document/CountryCode is titled “Country Named Authority List from the Metadata Registry of the Publications Office”, and points to http://publications.europa.eu/mdr/authority/country (which should actually be updated to https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/concept-scheme/-/resource?uri=http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country according to INSPIRE-MIF/helpdesk-registry#34).

However, the “Country Named Authority List from the Metadata Registry of the Publications Office” is another code list. It consists of code values of three letters, as opposed to two in the Interinstitutional style guide.

Using that code list, the data above has to be encoded as follows, using another code, that is DNK instead of DK.

   <au:country>
    <gmd:Country codeList="http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codeList/CountryCode" codeListValue="DNK"/>
   </au:country>

or as follows:

   <au:country>
    <gmd:Country codeList="http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/country" codeListValue="DNK"/>
   </au:country>

Note: The document referred to at http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode was changed at some point, see http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:1 vs http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/codelist/CountryCode:2.

What code list should be used? The decision may affect the data models and generated schemas (referring textually to the Interinstitutional style guide) and / or the information in the INSPIRE registry regarding CountryCode.

[fabiovinci]

Dear @heidivanparys,

thank you for raising the question, which affects both the registry and the schemas.

Regarding the registry, it seems quite clear that the values that should be used are the two-letter codes since they are listed in the D2.5 Generic Conceptual Model and the definition of the codelist in the UML refers to the "Interinstitutional style guide published by the Publications Office of the European Union" which confirms those codes.

I suggest continuing this discussion in the related issue in the registry helpdesk.

Regarding the schemas, it seems the ISO 19139 data type "gmd:Country_PropertyType" was used instead of "gml:ReferenceType" as for the other attributes that refer to a codelist. If this can be considered wrong, the related change proposal needs to be discussed in the related helpdesk, but the change will break current implementations.

[heidivanparys]

I suggest continuing this discussion in the related issue in the registry helpdesk.

Ok, I copied the discussion in the related issue, and close this issue.