FAO GAUL: Global Administrative Unit Layers 2015, First-Level Administrative Units

AI-generated Key Takeaways

• The FAO GAUL dataset provides global administrative unit boundaries for all countries, standardized with a unified coding system.

• It includes data at the country, first (departments/provinces/states), and second administrative levels, and where available, down to lower levels.

• The dataset is licensed for non-commercial use by the UN and other authorized institutions, with specific terms outlined in the data license.

• Earth Engine provides tools to explore and visualize the GAUL dataset, offering code snippets for both FeatureCollection and FeatureView representations.

• GAUL aims to standardize administrative unit data globally by collecting the best available information and validating it against the UN country boundaries.

Dataset Availability

2014-12-19T16:45:00Z–2014-12-19T16:45:00Z

Dataset Provider

FAO UN

Earth Engine Snippet

FeatureCollection
ee.FeatureCollection("FAO/GAUL/2015/level1")

FeatureView
ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer("FAO/GAUL/2015/level1_FeatureView")

Tags

borders departments fao gaul infrastructure-boundaries provinces states table un

Description

The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) compiles and disseminates the best available information on administrative units for all the countries in the world, providing a contribution to the standardization of the spatial dataset representing administrative units. The GAUL always maintains global layers with a unified coding system at country, first (e.g. departments), and second administrative levels (e.g. districts). Where data is available, it provides layers on a country by country basis down to third, fourth, and lowers levels. The overall methodology consists in a) collecting the best available data from most reliable sources, b) establishing validation periods of the geographic features (when possible), c) adding selected data to the global layer based on the last country boundaries map provided by the UN Cartographic Unit (UNCS), d) generating codes using GAUL Coding System, and e) distribute data to the users (see Technical Aspects of the GAUL Distribution Set. Note that some administrative units are multipolygon features.

Table Schema

Table Schema

Name	Type	Description
ADM0_CODE	INT	GAUL country code
ADM0_NAME	STRING	UN country name
DISP_AREA	STRING	Unsettled territory: 'Yes' or 'No'
STATUS	STRING	Status of the country
Shape_Area	DOUBLE	Shape area
Shape_Leng	DOUBLE	Shape length
ADM1_CODE	INT	GAUL code of administrative units at first level
ADM1_NAME	STRING	Name of administrative units at first level
EXP1_YEAR	INT	Expiry year of the administrative unit
STR1_YEAR	INT	Creation year of the administrative unit

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

The GAUL dataset is distributed to the United Nations and other authorized international and national institutions/agencies. FAO grants a license to use, download and print the materials contained in the GAUL dataset solely for non-commercial purposes and in accordance with the conditions specified in the data license. The full GAUL Data License document is available for downloading. See also the disclaimer.

Explore with Earth Engine

Important: Earth Engine is a platform for petabyte-scale scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets, both for public benefit and for business and government users. Earth Engine is free to use for research, education, and nonprofit use. To get started, please register for Earth Engine access.

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var dataset = ee.FeatureCollection('FAO/GAUL/2015/level1');

Map.setCenter(7.82, 49.1, 4);

var styleParams = {
  fillColor: 'b5ffb4',
  color: '00909F',
  width: 1.0,
};

dataset = dataset.style(styleParams);

Map.addLayer(dataset, {}, 'First Level Administrative Units');

Open in Code Editor

Visualize as a FeatureView

A FeatureView is a view-only, accelerated representation of a FeatureCollection. For more details, visit the FeatureView documentation.

Important: Earth Engine is a platform for petabyte-scale scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets, both for public benefit and for business and government users. Earth Engine is free to use for research, education, and nonprofit use. To get started, please register for Earth Engine access.

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var fvLayer = ui.Map.FeatureViewLayer('FAO/GAUL/2015/level1_FeatureView');

var visParams = {
  color: '00909F',
  fillColor: 'b5ffb4',
  opacity: 1,
  width: 1,
  pointSize: 1
};

fvLayer.setVisParams(visParams);
fvLayer.setName('First Level Administrative Units');

Map.setCenter(7.82, 49.1, 4);
Map.add(fvLayer);

Open in Code Editor

FAO GAUL: Global Administrative Unit Layers 2015, First-Level Administrative Units

The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) compiles and disseminates the best available information on administrative units for all the countries in the world, providing a contribution to the standardization of the spatial dataset representing administrative units. The GAUL always maintains global layers with a unified coding system at country, first …

FAO/GAUL/2015/level1, borders,departments,fao,gaul,infrastructure-boundaries,provinces,states,table,un

2014-12-19T16:45:00Z/2014-12-19T16:45:00Z

-90 -180 90 180

Google Earth Engine

https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets