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Fourth Meeting - UN/LOCODE Advisory Group

27 November 2020
on-line Geneva Switzerland

Background

The “United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations” (UN/LOCODE) is an international standard and one of the UNECE flagship products, widely used in the trade community and other areas. Managed and maintained by UNECE, it is the product of a wide collaboration in the framework of joint trade facilitation efforts undertaken by the United Nations, other international organizations, governmental bodies and the business community.

Aiming at a better service the UN/LOCODE user community and sustainable development of UN/LOCODE, the UNECE secretariat strives to meet growing demands with limited resources. In 2015, the UN/LOCODE Focal Point Network was set up to improve data quality through support from governmental authorities.

In 2017, the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group  to advise the Secretariat in the development of the standard and to provide a platform for all interested stakeholders to contribute to the further use and the promotion of the standard. The UN/LOCODE Advisory Group meets once per year.

In 2018, the Advisory Group recommended the development of a UN/LOCODE management system to support the new workflow of the maintenance team including the global network of UN/LOCODE Focal Points.

The development of this system through the UN/LOCODE Re-engineering Project kicked off in 2019. The workflow and the requirements of this system were discussed and supported in the annual meeting of the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group in 2019. Software development has since made good progress and the current state of development will be presented at the fourth annual meeting of the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group in 2020.

At the 2020 meeting of the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group will present and discuss important developments related to UN/LOCODE including the use of UN/LOCODE for the Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA) by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for the European Maritime Single Window by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), and the work of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN).

Maintenance issues are one of the key topics to be discussed at the meeting. Based on the revised UNECE Recommendation N° 16, which was approved this year, the Maintenance Team will share their experience and raise issues for further discussion and solutions.

Target Audience

The UN/LOCODE Advisory Group members including representatives of the UN/LOCODE user community, UN/LOCODE Focal Points, and UN/CEFACT experts; the UN/LOCODE re-engineering project team members; International Organizations.

Agenda, Documentation and Presentations

Opening
Speech by Maria Ceccarelli (Chief, Trade Facilitation Section, Economic Cooperation and Trade Division, UNECE)
Speech by Yueming Qiu (Chair of the UN/LOCODE Advisory Group)

Item 1. Adoption of the agenda
   UN/LOCODE-AG/2020/INF.1- Agenda

Item 2. Introduction of experts

Item 3. Report from the UN/LOCODE secretariat
   UN/LOCODE-AG/2020/INF.2 - Presentation (Yan Zhang, UNECE)

Item 4. New developments and follow-ups
    UN/LOCODE-AG/2020/INF.3 - Presentation on the use of UN/LOCODE to identify PSMA designated ports (Jose Acuna, FAO)
    Presentation of the use of UN/LOCODE in EMSA Central Location Database (Lukas Ziokowski, EMSA)
    Presentation of the latest revision of ISO 3166 (Yan Zhang, UNECE)
    Presentation on the work of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (Trent Palmer, UNGEGN)

Item 5. UN/LOCODE Maintenance
   Report from the Maintenance Team (Bertrand Geoffray, Co-convenor, UN/LOCODE Maintenance Team)
   UN/LOCODE-AG/2020/INF.4 - Presentation of the study paper on UN/LOCODE (Wenfeng Sun, Co-convenor, UN/LOCODE Maintenance Team)

Item 6. UN/LOCODE Re-engineering Project
   Report from the Re-engineering Project Team (Wenfeng Sun, Co-leader of the project)
   Presentation of the new UN/LOCODE Management System (Yan Zhang, UNECE)
   UN/LOCODE-AG/2020/INF.5 - Proposal for Web services for data exchange of UN/LOCODE (Jiajun Shen, IMO)

Item 7. Future work

Item 8. Other business

Item 9. Adoption of decisions
  
UN/LOCODE-AG/2020/INF.6 - Decisions

Closing