Europe Edition 2022/2023: updated administrative and postcode boundaries illustrate changes in Europe
Bruchsal, Germany – GfK has released its Europe Edition 2022/2023, which includes digital maps for all of Europe, reflecting the thousands of regional changes that have occurred since the previous release. The map sets are available for 42 European countries and offer coverage of the latest administrative and postcode boundaries. Up-to-date digital maps are the basis for carrying out accurate geographic analyses in geomarketing software and business intelligence systems.
The new Europe Edition is now available and includes digital maps for all of Europe which reflect the latest regional status and feature numerous new details and regional levels. Due to newly created or dissolved regions as well as boundary adjustments, there have been changes to almost all European countries, with the exceptions of Greece and North Macedonia. For many countries, the map sets have been recreated based on more granular base data. With just a few exceptions, the included maps offer coverage down to the most detailed postcode and administrative levels for the featured countries. GfK’s geomarketing experts have also released updated 2022 European market data that fits seamlessly with the maps, including GfK Purchasing Power and information on inhabitants and households.
Andreas Wicht, head of cartography in GfK’s Geomarketing solution area, explains: “In Europe, there are countless territory changes every year as state administrations and postal organizations seek to become more efficient and cut costs. That’s why we update our map set for Europe annually, offering our customers an optimal planning basis for their geomarketing analyses in sales, marketing, expansion, and controlling. For example, in the Netherlands alone, there have been several thousand changes, ranging from 491 dissolved and 1,938 new 6-digit postcode areas to a new layer of the country’s 3,340 wards as well as border changes at all administrative and postal levels.”
An up-to-date and precise map base is the crucial foundation for all spatial analyses, whether in a geomarketing software, a classic BI system, or other database-based applications. Above all, postcode areas typically are the basis for geocoding the address-related data of a company. If, for example, the postcode of a company site changes, any turnover generated by this site would be attributed to the wrong postcode or disappear completely from the reports if the previous postcode has been dissolved.
New additions
GfK’s Europe Edition 2022/2023 reflects the thousands of changes that occurred in almost every one of the 42 countries in Europe, both at the postal and administrative territory levels. Below is a country-by-country description of some of the more comprehensive changes:
Bulgaria
The whole country has been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for Bulgaria has been expanded to include two new administrative layers of the country’s two zones and 5,257 settlements.
Cyprus
The whole country has been recreated based on more granular base data. The map set for Cyprus now also includes a new administrative layer of the country’s 744 quarters.
Kosovo
The map set for Kosovo has been expanded to include the two new postcode layers of the country’s seven 1-digit postcode areas and 84 5-digit postcode areas.
Latvia
The layer of Latvia’s counties has been replaced by a new layer of the country’s 43 municipalities.
Netherlands
As of this release, a new administrative layer of the country’s 3,340 wards is available.
Portugal
The whole country has been recreated at the administrative and postal levels based on new census boundaries.
Sweden
With this release, the precision of the postcode areas in the two major cities of Stockholm and Gotenburg has been improved.
Turkey
Turkey’s city districts and settlements have been expanded to include full coverage of the provinces of Trabzon, Rize, Manisa, Çanakkale, Balıkesir as well as parts of the provinces İzmir und Uşak.
Ukraine
The map featuring the country’s five-digit postcode boundaries now fully covers the whole country with the exceptions of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Availability
The maps for 42 European countries are available in all standard map formats, including GfK RegioGraph Lay (*.lay), ESRI Shapefile (*.shp), ESRI File Geodatabase (*.gdb), MapInfo TAB Extended (*.tab) or MapInfo Interchange Format (*.mif). With the release of the Europe Edition 2020/2021, the previously used Windows encoding for shapefiles was replaced by the more practical Unicode (UTF-8) encoding standard. In addition, the MapInfo TAB format was 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.
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