Implementation of ISO 3166-1

The acceptance which an International Standard has gained within its potential user community can be seen from the number or scale of its applications. Below is a very short selection of applications of ISO 3166-1 which can be seen on the World Wide Web.

• UN/LOCODE, Recommendation 16 of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, used in international trade to code ports, customs offices and other sites relevant in trade, has code elements which all incorporate the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code element of the country the site is located in.
  
  
• The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a United Nations Specialized Agency, encodes "states, other entities and intergovernmental organizations" in its ST.3 standard with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2-Code.
  
  
• The code elements from ISO 4217 Codes for the representation of currencies and funds are based on the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2-code, e.g, USD for US Dollar where US comes from ISO 3166-1.
  
  
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) uses the alpha-2 code in its INIS-Database (International Nuclear Information System) providing information on the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology.
  
  
• IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, uses the alpha-2 code to identify the Internet ccTLDs (country code Top-Level Domains) like ".fr", ".eg" or ".jp".
  
  
• Federal Express uses IATA country codes, which are those of ISO 3166-1, to help their customers track shipments they've made of they make with FedEx.
  
  
• The UN Food an Agricultural Organization (FAO) uses ISO 3166-1 in its International Bibliographic Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology (AGRIS).
  
  
• The World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC), part of the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme within the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and operated by the Meteorological Services of Canada (MSC), are using ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes to identify the country in which measuring stations are located.
  
  
• The European Union uses ISO 3166-1 in the Geonomenclature of the EU Statistical Office. The Geonomenclature, which is important for external trade statistics, can be downloaded from the External trade pages of EUROSTAT. You may download the geonomenclature directly from here.
  
  
• Code elements are used in health informatics, for example, to identify the source countries when communicating information about patients. The ISO 3166/MA gives recommendations for referencing country code elements using OIDs or URNs.