FIPS

In US GIS, FIPS typically refers to federal standard geographic codes. (FIPS is an acronym for "Federal Information Processing Standard".)

Tags with these codes appear on many US states, counties, and places in OpenStreetMap. Unfortunately, the tagging can be messy.

Summary of FIPS code tagging in OpenStreetMap

Name	Scope	Common keys	Notes
FIPS 10-4	Countries and regions (example: Canada is "CA")	country_code_fips=* ref:fips=* (for some subdivisions)	Not a standard since 2008. Use ISO 3166 and see Country code. Wikidata: Property:P901
FIPS 5-2	US states (example: California's numeric code is "06")	ref:fips=* gnis:state_id=* (740k uses) gnis:ST_num=* (164k uses) nist:state_fips=* (4k uses) nist:fips_code=* (4k uses) tiger:STATEFP=* (27k uses) tiger:statefp=* (12k uses) STATEFP=* (4k uses)	Now maintained by ANSI Wikidata: Property:P883
FIPS 6-4	US counties (example: Fresno County in California is "019", or prefixed with the state code "06019")	gnis:county_id=* (748k uses) gnis:County_num=* (164k uses) nist:fips_code=* (4k uses) county:ansi=* (California)	Now maintained by ANSI Wikidata: Property:P882
FIPS 55-3	US places (example: Fresno city in California is "27000", or prefixed with the state code "0627000")	tiger:PLACEFP=* (26k uses) tiger:PLCIDFP=* (26k uses)	Now maintained by ANSI Wikidata: Property:P774

County and place codes are unique only within their state. More than one county in the US has a FIPS code of "001". County and place codes are often combined with their state FIPS code to form a unique code. This complicates OSM semantics a little: sometimes a FIPS tag means "this OSM object is equivalent to this FIPS code" (like ref=*), other times it means "this OSM object is within this FIPS code" (like is_in=*).

Example: On Fresno County Fresno County, nist:fips_code=6019 means "this is California's Fresno County" while nist:state_fips=6 means "this is in California".

Additional tagging notes:

• nist:fips_code sometimes refers to states ("045"), sometimes counties ("22075")
• nist: prefix may be considered outdated because NIST is no longer the source for these codes
• tiger:PLACEFP is just the 5-digit place code ("74352"); tiger:PLCIDFP is the state+place code ("0174352")
• tiger:CLASSFP (26k uses) refers to a FIPS 55 class code

See also

• GNIS

External links

• Federal Information Processing Standards on Wikipedia
• ANSI Codes at the US Census