New digital maps available for Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Bruchsal, Germany, May 10, 2019 – GfK has released updated map editions for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with coverage of hundreds of changes to administrative and postcode regions. Up-to-date digital maps are the basis for carrying out accurate geographic analyses in geomarketing software and BI systems.

GfK’s digital maps for Germany, Austria and Switzerland have been updated to reflect the latest status and are available for all official regional levels. The new maps offer coverage of the hundreds of postal and administrative changes that have occurred since the last update. The most significant changes are due to regional reform in Germany’s federal state of Thuringia, where numerous mu-nicipalities were dissolved and newly created, as well as to the dissolution of all 42 unincorporated regions in Germany’s federal state of Bavaria. There were only minor changes to Austria and Switzerland.

Up-to-date digital maps give companies from all industries an optimal foundation for carrying out accurate, error-free geocoding as well as analyses of company and market data. As such, the maps have a broad range of applications from locating target groups and market potential for marketing campaigns to estimating and analyzing risk in the insurance industry and planning efficient sales, delivery and service regions.

2019 changes in Germany
administrative:

• urban/rural districts: six boundary changes
• municipalities: 261 municipalities were dissolved and 200 were newly created. There were boundary changes in 14 municipalities due to annexations and municipal reapportioning. Seven municipalities underwent an ID change, while two municipalities had name changes. This re-duced the number of municipalities from 11,119 (as of 01.01.2018) to 11,058 (as of 01.01.2019).

postal:
A five-digit postcode system was introduced in 1993 in reunified Germany. These postcode bounda-ries are continually adjusted to meet the needs of the postal service and consumers.

• five-digit postcodes: Six postcodes were dissolved and two were newly created; two postcodes underwent name changes and there were 151 boundary changes due to municipal reapportion-ing.

2019 changes in Austria
administrative:

• municipalities: Three municipalities were dissolved, one was newly created and one underwent an ID change. This reduced the total number of municipalities from 2,120 (as of 01.01.2018) to 2,118 (as of 01.01.2019).
• enumeration districts: Four enumeration districts underwent an ID change.

postal:

• four-digit postcodes: Two were dissolved and two new four-digit postcodes were created; there were also 14 boundary changes due to municipal reapportioning.

2019 changes in Switzerland
administrative:

• districts: one boundary change
• municipalities: 13 municipalities were dissolved and three were newly created. There were three boundary changes in addition to one ID change and one name change. This reduced the total number of municipalities from 2,235 (as of 01.01.2018) to 2,225 (as of 01.01.2019).

postal:

• six-digit postcodes: three dissolved and two newly created, one ID change and 208 boundary changes and nine boundary corrections due to municipal reapportioning
• four-digit postcodes: Two postcodes were dissolved, one underwent a name change and 146 boundary changes/corrections were carried out due to municipal reapportioning.

Coverage, features, formats

The new map editions feature comprehensive coverage, seamlessly fitting and overlap-free bound-aries, complete national and local place-name attributions and infinite zoom capability.

Like all of GfK’s digital maps, the new GfK map editions for Germany, Austria and Switzerland are available in all standard map formats, including *.shp (ESRI), *.tab (MapInfo), *.gdb (GeoDatabase) and *.lay (GfK). The maps are also available in the Oracle (Spatial) database format for use in Ora-cle Business Intelligence applications.

The maps for all three countries (or for another European country of choice) as well as seamlessly fitting, up-to-date GfK purchasing power data are standard components of RegioGraph 2019, GfK’s new geomarketing software solution.

These maps are part of GfK's cartographic coverage of 240 countries, the largest collection of digi-tal administrative and postcode maps available on the market.