The world's largest open, free and research-ready database of political administrative boundaries.
Produced and maintained by the William & Mary geoLab since 2017, the geoBoundaries Global Database of Political Administrative Boundaries Database is an online, open license resource of boundaries (i.e., state, county) for every country in the world. We currently track approximately 300,000 boundaries across 199 entities, including all 195 UN member states, Greenland, Taiwan, Niue, and Kosovo. All boundaries are available to view or download in common file formats, including shapefiles; the only requirement for use is acknowledgement.
While many countries provide public domain information on where their boundaries are, a majority do not provide an authoritative, open digital source. We strongly believe that every global citizen should have access to information about the legal political boundaries they live within, without having to pay for the access.
Small shifts in legal boundaries can drive huge changes, but are rarely tracked or recognized. We collate or create the highest geographic precision open data possible to promote precise results, and keep all of our previous versions available online. geoBoundaries has been around since 2017, providing annual updates each year.
Every one of our boundaries is available as a Shapefile and geoJSON, with globally unique identifiers and consistent attributes. We provide both manual download and API access to support most users preferred mode of access.
Anyone can participate in conversations about - or contribute to - geoBoundaries by visiting our public repository. You can also learn more about the procedures used to build geoBoundaries by reading our peer reviewed (PLoS One) publication.
Download or view simplified versions of our data. These products are generally best suited for data visualization, or larger-scale analyses where imprecision may matter less (i.e., global or regional). You can download these boundaries across the entire globe all at once for ADM0 to ADM2.
Download or view every boundary in the world at ADM0, ADM1 and ADM2. These products are based on our simplified country boundaries, and are best suited to visualization or large-scale (i.e., global) analysis. If you are doing an analysis for one or a small number of countries, we recommend our country-specific datasets.
Download the highest resolution data we have available. Generally best for research or analysis purposes by advanced users. Only one country boundary is available for download at a time with our GUI (use of the API can enable larger analyses).
Information on every geoBoundary since 2.0.0 - current and past - can be retrieved through a simple query; a JSON object is returned suitable for use in your programming language of choice. Brief examples of API use are also provided.
Any uses of geoBoundaries should come with an acknowledgement - we really need it!
All we ask is an acknowledgement in any products you produce which use our data. The geoBoundaries team is primarily judged on it's citations: it is how our users, funders and peers track our progress and impact.
Runfola, Daniel, Austin Anderson, Heather Baier, Matt Crittenden, Elizabeth Dowker, Sydney Fuhrig, Seth Goodman, Grace Grimsley, Rachel Layko, Graham Melville, Maddy Mulder, Rachel Oberman, Joshua Panganiban, Andrew Peck, Leigh Seitz, Sylvia Shea, Hannah Slevin, Rebecca Yougerman, Lauren Hobbs. "geoBoundaries: A global database of political administrative boundaries." Plos one 15, no. 4 (2020): e0231866.Runfola D, Anderson A, Baier H, Crittenden M, Dowker E, Fuhrig S, et al. (2020) geoBoundaries: A global database of political administrative boundaries. PLoS ONE 15(4): e0231866. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231866Using the <a href= 'https://www.geoboundaries.org'>geoBoundaries</a> database, we constructed a time-series illustrating how under 5 child mortality has shifted over time.Administrative boundaries courtesy of <a href= 'https://www.geoboundaries.org'>geoBoundaries</a><a href= 'https://www.geoboundaries.org'>geoBoundaries</a>var map = L.map('map').setView([51.505, -0.09], 13); L.tileLayer( 'http://{s}.tile.osm.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png', {attribution: '<a href="www.geoboundaries.org">geoBoundaries</a>'} ).addTo(map);
geoBoundaries 3.0.0 is out!
Simplified data products for visualization are now available.
Global single-layer downloads are live.
Want to contribute, identified an error, or otherwise want to chat? Please reach out!