New Europe Edition 2021/2022 reflects latest changes to Europe’s administrative and postcode boundaries
Bruchsal, Germany, October 28, 2021 – GfK has released its Europe Map Edition 2021/2022, which includes thousands of updates to the previous year’s edition. The digital maps reveal Europe’s current administrative and postcode boundaries. As such, they provide the basis for carrying out accurate geographic analyses in Geomarketing software and BI systems, offering a reliable basis for location-related analyses for companies from all industries.
GfK’s Europe Edition includes digital maps for all of Europe which reflect the latest regional status and feature numerous new details and regional levels. Except for Albania, Belarus, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia, changes occurred in all European countries due to boundary adjustments related to newly created or dissolved regions. For many countries, the map sets have been recreated based on more granular base data. With just several exceptions, the included maps offer coverage down to the most detailed postcode and administrative levels for the featured countries. Also available is new 2021 market data on European purchasing power as well as inhabitants and households. Both the maps and market data are available immediately.
“Efficiency and saving costs play an important role in state administrations and postal organizations,” explains Klaus Dittmann, head of cartography in GfK’s Geomarketing solution area. “Reforms – such as last year’s administrative reform in Ukraine, which reduced the number of districts by 533 territories and introduced a new level of 1,769 municipalities – help increase efficiency and reduce costs. For this reason, we update our digital maps for Europe every year to reflect the continuous territorial changes in each country. This allows us to provide our customers with an accurate and reliable basis for their business analyses.”
Outdated postcode boundaries are problematic, because these are the means by which companies and organizations typically geocode their address-related data. For example, if the postcode of a company site changes, any turnover generated by this site would be attributed to the wrong post-code if the underlying postcode boundaries are incorrect or outdated. An up-to-date cartographic basis ensures that all turnover information is correctly geocoded and cross-referenced with other location-specific data.
New additions
GfK’s Europe Edition 2021/2022 reflects the thousands of changes to postcode and administrative levels that occurred in almost all European countries. Below is a country-by-country description of some of the more comprehensive changes:
Czech Republic
The maps for the whole country have been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for the Czech Republic now also includes a new administrative layer of the country’s 22,662 basic settlement units.
Ireland
The whole country has been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for Ireland has been expanded to include two new administrative layers:
- Small areas: 18,641 features
- Townlands: 50,031 features
Portugal
- 7-digit postcodes: 40,175 new (193,261 in total)
Serbia
The maps for the whole country have been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for Serbia now also includes a new administrative layer of the country’s 4,721 settlements.
Slovakia
The whole country has been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for Slovakia has been expanded to include two new administrative layers:
- Areas: 4 features
- Basic settlement units: 7,246 features
Spain
The whole country has been recreated based on current census section and municipality data.
- Census sections: 902 dissolved and 1,224 new
Sweden
The whole country has been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for Sweden has been expanded to include two new administrative layers:
- Parishes: 1,292 features
- DeSO: 5,985 features
Turkey
Turkey’s districts and neighborhoods have been expanded to include full coverage of the provinces of Ankara, Eskişehir, Bilecik, Bolu and Bursa. In addition, the districts of Emirdağ, İhsaniye, Bayat, İscehisar and Afyonkarahisar Merkez of the Afyonkarahisar province have been integrated into the layer.
- Districts and neighborhoods: 19 dissolved and 937 new
- 5-digit postcodes: 4 dissolved and 307 new, numerous boundary changes and boundary corrections
Ukraine
The map set for Ukraine has been recreated due to a completely reformed administrative structure and now includes an additional layer of the country’s 1,769 municipalities. The map featuring the country’s three- and five-digit postcode boundaries has also been recreated with an additional 26,954 features.
United Kingdom
- Wards: 700 dissolved and 507 new
Availability
The maps for 42 European countries are available in all standard map formats, including *.shp (ESRI), *.tab (MapInfo), *.lay (RegioGraph) and Oracle Spatial. With the release of last year’s GfK’s Europe Edition, the previously used Windows encoding for shapefiles has been replaced by the more practical Unicode (UTF-8) encoding standard. In addition, the MapInfo TAB format has been changed to the more current MapInfo TAB Extended format. All maps are vector-based and consequently offer infinite zoom and flexible viewing options.
Additional information on GfK’s worldwide digital maps can be found here.
Print-quality illustrations can be found here.