BS ISO 3166-3:2020

What is ISO 3166-3 about?  

ISO 3166-3 is the third part of Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions in multi-series. ISO 3166-3 is part of ISO 3166 series which provides universally applicable coded representation of names of countries (current and non-current), dependencies and other areas of particular geological interest and their sub-divisions. 

ISO 3166-3 specifies basic guidelines for the implementation and maintenance of codes for formerly used names of countries. 

Who is ISO 3166-3 for? 

ISO 31663 on Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions is useful for: 

• Geographical studies 
• Geographical research 
• Overseas trading 

Why should you use ISO 31663?  

ISO 31663 will help you in including the countries name which has been removed or changed or two or more countries merge into one country. ISO 31663 helps in setting the code element of the countries whose name has changed. These code elements help in setting the length and the length of code should contain four alphabetical characters.  

ISO 31662 helps in operating the maintenance agency according to the guidelines approved by the council. ISO 31662 guides you in implementing and maintaining the codes for previously used names of the country.  

What’s changed since the last update?  

BS ISO 31663:2020 supersedes BS ISO 31663:2013. BS ISO 31663:2020 includes some technical changes with respect to BS ISO 31663:2013. These include: 

• The codes have been moved to the database format. 
• The components of the codes have been defined by descriptors, not by column or line numbers. 
• The status of each alpha-2 country code element has been made explicit, as it is the main resource managed by ISO 3166/MA, necessary for traceability over time. 
• All characters in the database, specifically those with diacritical marks, have been checked with Universal Coded Character Set, ISO/IEC 10646, and are used consistently. 
• The database encoding is UTF-8 (Universal Character Set Transformation Format -8 bits) from ISO/IEC 10646, and the same has been used in many applications. 
• The three parts — three codes — belong to the same database, updates are done only once for all parts.