Hierarchical administrative subdivision codes (HASC) are codes to represent names of country

Country

A country is a region legally identified as a distinct entity in political geography. A country may be an independent sovereign state or one that is occupied by another state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, or a geographic region associated with a previously...

 subdivisions, such as states, province

Province

A province is a territorial unit, almost always an administrative division, within a country or state.-Etymology:The English word "province" is attested since about 1330 and derives from the 13th-century Old French "province," which itself comes from the Latin word "provincia," which referred to...

, region

Region

Region is most commonly found as a term used in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences also an area, notably among the different sub-disciplines of geography, studied by regional geographers. Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of like areas that are distinctive by their uniformity...

s.

They are described in the book "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries: A Comprehensive World Reference, 1900 Through 1998" written by Gwillim Law.

The codes are alphabetic and have constant length for the first level subdivisions.

DE.NW - North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia

North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous state of Germany, with four of the country's ten largest cities. The state was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, both formerly part of Prussia. Its capital is Düsseldorf. The state is currently run by a coalition of the...

DE.NW.DM - Regierungsbezirk Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

See also

• Geocode
  Geocode
  GEOCODE is a standardized all-natural number representation format specification for geospatial coordinate measurements that provide details of the exact location of geospatial point at, below, or above the surface of the earth at a specified moment of time.Geocode is patented under US Patents...
  
  s, ISO 3166-2
  ISO 3166-2
  ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization , and defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1...
  
  
• "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries: A Comprehensive World Reference, 1900 Through 1998" ISBN 0-7864-0729-8