February 5th, 2021
GfK releases updated digital map set for Asia

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Asia Edition 2020/2021: up-to-date administrative and postcode boundaries for 49 countries

Bruchsal, Germany – GfK has released a new and completely overhauled digital map edition for all of Asia. The edition features coverage of 49 countries, ranging from the three BRICS nations Russia, India and China to smaller countries such as Bahrain and the Maldives. The digital maps depict the latest status of administrative and postal regions and are a prerequisite for accurate location-based market analyses.

GfK’s new Asia Edition 2020/2021 includes digital maps for all of Asia, which reflect the latest regional status and feature several new details and regional levels. Due to boundary adjustments related to newly created or dissolved regions, changes occurred in most Asian countries. The new maps also offer a higher level of detail for many countries, especially along coastlines and in cities. GfK’s digital maps of postcodes and administrative regions such as provinces and municipalities comprise the basis for precise spatial analyses.

“Companies from all industries use digital maps to geocode, link and analyze company and market data as well as other location data,” explains Klaus Dittmann, head of cartography in GfK’s Geomarketing solution area. “In order to avoid erroneous analyses, detailed and up-to-date maps are essential. Creating maps that meet our requirements for detail and accuracy is particularly challenging in Asia due to lacking or incomplete data sources. Through extensive research and by consulting satellite imagery, among other methods, we were able to add numerous layers to our map set for Asia and depict boundaries even more accurately in order to provide our customers with an up-to-date and error-free map base.”

New additions

GfK’s Asia Edition 2020/2021 reflects the thousands of changes to postcode and administrative levels that occurred since the last edition. The following section shows a country-by-country description of some of the more comprehensive changes:

Cambodia

• Administrative: A completely new layer featuring the 1,634 municipalities is now available.
• Postal: The map set for Cambodia now includes new layers of the country’s 25 2-digit postcodes, 209 4-digit postcodes and 1,614 6-digit postcodes.

China

• Administrative: With this release, two new administrative maps for Macao’s 10 parishes and 26 statistical districts are available for the first time.
• Postal: In the map featuring the country’s 4-digit and 6-digit postcode areas, 2 regions were dissolved, resulting in a total number of 9,361 regions. There have been 51 name changes and several boundary changes.

Indonesia

• Administrative: The map set for Indonesia has been extended by new layers of the 7,197 districts as well as 82,291 villages.
• Postal: 2,001 newly created 5-digit postcode areas bring the total number of regions at this level to 10,560.

Pakistan

• Administrative: A new layer of Pakistan’s 617 tehsils is now available. There have been changes in all other administrative maps, for instance at the level of the country’s 154 districts: 6 were dissolved, 4 were newly created, and there have been 9 name changes.
• Postal: At the level of 2-digit postcode areas, there have been numerous boundary changes and corrections.

Russia

• Administrative: Russia’s administrative levels have been updated on the basis of new data from official sources. At the level of the 2,573 districts, for instance, 12 regions were newly created and 3 were dissolved. In addition, this level features numerous name changes. In terms of Russia’s city districts, there have been several name changes and boundary corrections.
• Postal: In the map featuring the country’s 2-digit and 6-digit postcode areas, the postcodes of the region Bryanskaya oblast have been completely revised. In total, there were 1 dissolved and 594 newly created postcode areas as well as 85 ID changes.

Saudi Arabia

• Administrative: At the level of Saudi Arabia’s 13 emirates and 118 governorates, there have been numerous boundary changes and corrections.
• Postal: The map set has been extended by a map of the country’s 61 2-digit postcode areas.

Singapore

• Administrative: At the level of Singapore’s 332 subzones, 9 were newly created.
• Postal: A new map of Singapore’s 121,387 6-digit postcode areas offers an unprecedented level of detail. At the level of the country’s 2-digit postcode, 2 regions were newly created.

Vietnam

• Administrative: At the district level, 1 region was dissolved, resulting in a total number of 712. This level also features 1 name change and 12 name corrections.
• Postal: There has been a new postal code system in Vietnam since 2018, which is why this release now includes a layer of the country’s 663 3-digit postcode areas.

Availability

GfK’s maps for Asia are available for 49 countries in both stand-alone country editions and as a comprehensive continent edition in all standard map formats, including *.shp (ESRI), *.tab (MapInfo), *.lay (RegioGraph) and Oracle Spatial. With the release of GfK’s Asia Edition 2020/2021, the previously used Windows encoding for shapefiles will be 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.

GfK is the official supplier of the CRESTA zones, which provide a uniform international standard for the aggregation and exchange of risk-related information in the reinsurance industry. GfK also offers the world’s largest collection of administrative and postcode maps.

Additional information on GfK’s worldwide digital maps can be found here.

Print-quality illustrations can be found here.

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