Error COORD-003

Latitude and longitude swapped in an EUDR GeoJSON file

GeoJSON puts longitude first. Swapped coordinates land in the wrong country, often in the sea, and the plot cannot be verified against any deforestation data.

Severity
Error. The Information System rejects the file, or silently stores something other than what you meant.
Fixed automatically?
Yes, after you have seen the change in hectares and accepted it.
In short
Swap the two numbers in every position. We check the swapped version against the declared producer country before offering this.

What the Information System does

It reads the numbers in the order given: "The order of elements must follow longitude, latitude" (GeoJSON File Description, Definitions). A swapped plot is either out of range and rejected (GeoJSON File Description, Common errors 11), or accepted at the wrong place, which is worse, because nothing tells you.

Why it happens

People say "latitude, longitude". GPS apps show latitude first. Google Maps copies latitude first. GeoJSON, and so the Information System, wants longitude first. It is the most natural mistake in the whole format.

A swapped plot lands somewhere real. A cocoa farm at 5.32° N, 4.37° W in Côte d'Ivoire, written the wrong way round, sits at 4.37° S, 5.32° E, in the Atlantic, some 500 km off the coast of Gabon. A plot in Brazil at 22.7° S, 49.0° W lands in the South Atlantic. Neither is out of range, so neither is rejected: they are simply wrong.

This is why the checker only proposes a swap when there is evidence for it: the declared ProducerCountry contains the swapped position and not the original, and why the swap is shown on the map before anything changes.

A broken example

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "features": [
    {
      "type": "Feature",
      "properties": {
        "ProducerCountry": "CI",
        "ProductionPlace": "Swapped",
        "Area": 1.2287
      },
      "geometry": {
        "type": "Polygon",
        "coordinates": [
          [
            [6.123456, -5.123456],
            [6.123456, -5.122456],
            [6.124456, -5.122456],
            [6.124456, -5.123456],
            [6.123456, -5.123456]
          ]
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

What the checker reports for this file:

  1. As written, this plot falls outside CI. With longitude and latitude swapped it falls inside. GeoJSON puts longitude first., line 13, column 24
Before1
Before. Numbered circles mark where the checker located the problem. Centred on 0.5000° N, 0.5005° E.
After the fix
After the fix. Put longitude first in all 5 positions of plot 1, which moves it inside CI. Centred on 6.1240° N, 5.1230° W.

Fix it in EUDRplot

  1. Open the file in the checker. Where a plot's swapped position falls inside its declared ProducerCountry and its written position does not, the checker flags it.
  2. Review the swap. Choose Swap longitude and latitude. The map shows where each plot would move, with its area before and after.
  3. Accept it. Choose Accept the change and apply. The change goes in the change log. If the whole file was written latitude-first, the swap fixer tool can swap every position at once.

Fix it in QGIS

  1. Swap the axes. Run Swap X and Y coordinates from the Processing Toolbox (Ctrl+Alt+T). It swaps every vertex of every selected or all features.
  2. Check the result on a map. Add a basemap and confirm each plot now lies in its country.
  3. Export. Save Features As… GeoJSON, EPSG:4326.

Try it: check the example, or your own file

Drop a GeoJSON, KML, shapefile or CSV here, or .

Open the full checker

Checked in your browser. The file is not uploaded, stored or sent anywhere.

Related errors

Guides

Free tools

Sources

Rule COORD-003, rule set 2026.09.2. The same rule runs in the checker, the free tools and the command-line tool.

Last verified against these sources on .