What is the Core Location Vocabulary?

The Core Location Vocabulary is a simplified, reusable and extensible data model that captures the fundamental characteristics of a location, represented as an address, a geographic name, or a geometry.

Description

The SEMIC Core Vocabularies are the starting point for developing interoperable e-Government systems as it allows mappings with existing data models. The guarantees Public Administrations to attain cross-border and cross-sector interoperability.

The Core Location Vocabulary is one of the Core Vocabularies that have been developed by the SEMIC action of the former ISA² Programme, which is now named Interoperable Europe. The specification is developed in an open process with the active involvement of the SEMIC action stakeholders including: The e-Government Core Vocabularies Working Group (with a total of 69 people from 22 countries, 19 EU and 3 non-EU countries (USA, South-Africa, and Norway), and several EU Institutions and the Directorate-General for Digital Services: DG DIGIT.

The current version of the Core Location Vocabulary is 2.1.0. This version can be downloaded on GitHub.

Benefits

The Core Location Vocabulary provides a minimum set of classes and properties for describing a location represented as an address, a geographic name, or a geometry. This specification enables interoperability among land registers and any other ICT based solution exchanging and processing location information.

Version information

• On 5 May 2026, version 2.1.1 was released.
• On 1 February 2024, version 2.1.0 was released.
• On 16 May 2023, version 2.0.2 was released. 
• April 2021 - New public review cycle of several Core Vocabularies started. After a series of five webinars, version 2.0.0 of the Core Location Vocabulary was released. 
• May 2012 - version 1.00 of the combined specification of Core Business, Core Location and Core Person Vocabulary was released and endorsed by the ISA Coordination Group, after a public review and discussions in the relevant Working Group.
• November 2011 until February 2012 - version 0.2 was developed.

Development and maintenance process

This specification was produced by the Core Vocabularies Working Group (Location Task Force), following the Process and Methodology for Developing Core Vocabularies. It has been reviewed by representatives of the Member States of the European Union, PSI publishers, and by other interested parties.

Reuse of the Core Location Vocabulary

The list below includes countries and organisations that reuse or promote the use of the Core Location Vocabulary.

• Fi-Core & Digital and Population Data Services Agency of Finland in the Data Vocabularies Tool.
• The Electronic Administration Portal (PAE) of Spain.
• The International Hellenic University of Greece for research purposes.
• DIGST of Denmark in their common digital public architecture.
• The Center of Semantic Intergration of Russia.
• The Social Insurance Institute (ZUS) of Poland for research purposes.
• The National Interoperability Framework of Slovenia.
• The Dutch Governmental Reference Architecture.
• The Once-Only Principle Project (TOOP) as part of their backend.
• The Agency for Digital Italy (AGID) and their extension of the Core Location Vocabulary.

Get involved!

Do you want to participate in the work of our Core Vocabularies Working Group? Share your comments and change requests via the GitHub Core Location Vocabulary repository.