A location is defined as any named geographical place, recognized by a competent national body, either with permanent facilities used for goods movement associated with trade, and used for these purposes, or proposed by the government concerned or by a competent national or international organization for inclusion in the UN/LOCODE. A port is any location with permanent facilities at which vessels can load or discharge cargo moving in maritime traffic. An anchoring area is any location official recommended for anchoring. There are areas dedicated for different type of vessels or general. Such areas are announced in notifications or in sea charts.

A code is data transformation or data representation in different forms according to pre-establish rules. (Definition adapted from ISO 5127-1:1983)

A code element is result of applying a code to an element in a set of elements to be coded. In UN/LOCODE, one code element represents the name of a port, or a location, i.e. anchoring area, and in addition possible subsidiary location, i.e. an ISPS-area or -terminal. (Definition adapted from ISO 2382-4/1987) A five-character code element is provided for each location included UN/LOCODE and consists of:

a) two letters identifying the country, according to the ISO 3166 two-letter Code for the representation of names of countries, and UN/ECE/FAL recommendation No. 3, and

b) three characters identifying the location within the country.

e.g. A vessel call for Norway, Oslo in the five-character code elements is: “NOOSL”

the official Locode list of SSN is obtained from the UNECE (http://www.unece.org/),

NOOSL