FIPS 10-4 Maps

Last data update: July 5, 2013

Last page update: March 20, 2016

 

This page presents two maps of the FIPS 10-4 entities, fips10c (countries, zip, sha1) and fips10s (subdivisions, zip, sha1), in shapefile format, derived from the VMAP0 polbnda layer.

The VMAP0 polbnda layer contains geometries representing the first-level administrative regions, but besides the geometries, the only identification of a region is a name. The main purpose of the fips10 maps is to connect those regions with the FIPS codes. The result is limited by the original data: if polbnda does not provide the various regions of a country, we do not attempt to recreate them; also, the polbnda layer represents regions as they existed at some point in time (not necessarily the same point in time for all countries), and we just preserve that.

Because the polbnda layer represents boundaries at some point in time, and because the FIPS codes are sometimes incomplete, we also use the additional codes described here.

Process

The process is entirely driven by a script. What follows is a description of what this script does.

In the polbnda layer, each polygon represents an administrative region or part of one. The field na2 is a two-letter code of the country to which this region belongs, and the field nam is usually the name the region. In some cases, the nam field is of the form feature_name#region_name, e.g. ABLINGI ISLAND#WEST NEW BRITAIN; in this case, Ablingi Island is the name of an island that is part of the West New Britain administrative region ofPapua New Guinea. Our first step is to split such two part names, populating the na0 and na1 fields.

We then use the polbnda_fips table which maps na2, na1 combinations to a FIPS four letter code; the resulting FIPS code is used to populate the fips4 field and the fips2 field (using only the first two letters).

Next we fix a few problems:

Finally, we dissolve the areas to retain only the fips2 and fips4 attributes, and then dissolve one more time to retain only the fips2 attributes.


Terms of use

CC0 To the extent possible under law, Eric Muller has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this page, the maps it presents and the scripts and data to build those maps. This work is published from the United States.

Note that this does not affect the rights other persons may have in those files. I am not qualified to determine whether such rights exist.


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