ISO 19160-4

Working Group 7 
Reference Status/Date Name WG
ISO 19160-4:2023 2023-04-13 Addressing — Part 4: International postal
address components and template language
7

ISO 19160-4:2017

2017-11-06 Addressing — Part 4: International postal
address components and template language
7

 

Scope
This document defines key terms for postal addressing, postal address components and constraints on their use.
Specifically, this document specifies postal address components organized into three hierarchical
levels:
  • elements, such as organization name or postcode, which have well-defined conceptual meaning and are not themselves made up of subordinate components, though they can be sub-divided for technical purposes;
  • constructs, such as organization identification, which group elements into units form a logical portion of a postal address;
  • segments, such as addressee specification, which group related postal address constructs and/or postal address elements into units with a specific defined function.

This document also specifies a mechanism for the creation of sub-elements, which correspond to either sub-divisions of element content, such as door type or door indicator or to multiple occurrences and locations of elements in an address, such as levels of administrative regions.

This document does not specify the length of any component nor the value range of any component.

Moreover, this document specifies the codes to identify elements and sub-elements.

Further, this document specifies postal address rendering rules. This includes:

  • identification and ordering of output lines in a rendered address;
  • conditions for the selection of candidate lines;
  • the order and concatenation of postal address components;
  • required and optional components;
  • parameters to contextualize an address for rendering;
  • the formatting of the components, subject to constraints on the space available for that task.

Postal address rendering rules are represented in this document as a postal address template.

Finally, this document specifies language suitable for computer processing to formally express postal address templates.

This document does not cover the topic of data protection. Users of the document are nevertheless
reminded that the storage and exchange of personal data are subject to legislation in many countries.

 

Document Normative References:

ISO 639-1, Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 1: Alpha-2 code

ISO 3166-1, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions — Part 1: Country codes

ISO 15924, Information and documentation — Codes for the representation of names of scripts

 

Referenced from active ISO/TC 211 standard:
 
 

 

Model References:
ISO 19103 Edition 1
ISO 19160-1 Edition 1

 

Supporting the following Sustainable Development Goals: