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cristan / improved-un-locodes

UN/LOCODE dataset, but with more and actually reliable coordinates
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Submit the corrected data to UN/LOCODE? #3

Closed RokeJulianLockhart closed 2 months ago

RokeJulianLockhart commented 5 months ago

Considering the amount of systems reliant upon UNLOCODE's data, it'd be a massive help to them. Because filing loads of automatic improvement and addition requests for each change would potentially be problematic, maybe it'd be worth contacting the database administrator?

cristan commented 2 months ago

Oops, I missed this message, hence the late reply.

Unfortunately, it's very much not that easy. I actually did get into contact and actually went to Hamburg and presented my findings at the 2024 Meeting of the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group.

One of the big problems is the IT side of things: there isn't so much of a database but a disjointed list of several Google Sheets. There are even a few volunteers like myself who are willing to create a new IT system ourselves, but because of the link with the UN, there are strict rules which make this almost impossible. And there really isn't enough funding right now to fund a proper backend being developed. They are trying to get the extra funds, but I doubt if it will come. Heck, there is even talk about reducing the number of releases to 1 per year instead of 2 because of a lack of funding.

I've tried reporting about 300 changes where the dataset is most wrong at https://apps.unece.org/unlocode/, but the fact is that as far as I know, there isn't a real backend where these requests end up: this just forwards the an e-mail towards the National Focus Point, and these are all volunteers. In the end, I'm sure a few ended up in the 2024-1 release, but not too many.

So trust me, I've tried and I'm still trying, but I have to admit I've mostly given up by now.

And even when the UN/LOCODE really steps up their game, it will still take ages: my project has about 20000 extra locations compared to the original. Every change is manually checked, so if I report a 1000 new coordinates every year (which would amount to almost doubling the amount of changes per release), it will still take 20 years for all of them to be in the official dataset. So yeah, unless something drastically changes, my project will unfortunately stay relevant for a very long time.

RokeJulianLockhart commented 2 months ago

https://github.com/cristan/improved-un-locodes/issues/3#issuecomment-2266263196

@cristan, that's properly commendable.

  1. I'll make sure to utilize this repository instead of the original source, and recommend others to, in that case. Of course, if that's acceptable.
  2. I'll also see whether I can register as a volunteer to hopefully push some of those suggestions of yours through.
sabas commented 2 months ago

@RokeJulianLockhart hello and thanks for your interest! Would you please send an email to me or Cristan so we may organise for the next cycle?

RokeJulianLockhart commented 2 months ago

https://github.com/cristan/improved-un-locodes/issues/3#issuecomment-2268962589

@sabas, we'll need to wait 6 months, unfortunately. I'm joining the RAF, and Basic will take a little much of time. However, once that's complete, undoubtedly. I have it set as a timed task.