FAO GAUL 500m Simplified: Global Administrative Unit Layers 2025, First-Level Administrative Units

Dataset Availability

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z–2025-12-31T00:00:00Z

Dataset Producer

FAO UN

Earth Engine Snippet

ee.FeatureCollection("FAO/GAUL_SIMPLIFIED_500m/2025/level1")

Tags

borders departments fao gaul infrastructure-boundaries provinces states table un

Description

This version of the GAUL dataset is simplified at 500m.

The administrative boundaries dataset at level 1 (sub-national level) is part of the Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL 2025) dataset series which includes information on administrative units for all countries in the world, providing a contribution to the standardization of the spatial dataset representing administrative units.

The administrative boundaries at the level 1 dataset distinguishes States, Provinces, Departments and equivalents.

The GAUL maintains global layers with a unified coding system at country, first (e.g. departments), and second administrative levels (e.g. districts). The overall GAUL methodology consists in a) collecting the best available data from most reliable sources, b) assembling national datasets into a common dataset by matching international boundaries with a reference authoritative dataset (UN 2018), c) standardizing attributes to a common table of attributes, d) generating codes using the GAUL Coding System, e) applying a topology, and f) validating metadata for each country (see Technical Guidelines of the GAUL 2024 Set). Note that some administrative units are multipolygon features.

Table Schema

Table Schema

Name	Type	Description
FID	INT	Internal feature identifier
ISO3_CODE	STRING	ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code
MAP_CODE	STRING	Map code for statistical joins
GAUL0_CODE	INT	GAUL country code
GAUL0_NAME	STRING	Country name (UN standard)
GAUL1_CODE	INT	GAUL code of administrative units at first level
GAUL1_NAME	STRING	Name of administrative units at first level
CONTINENT	STRING	Continent name
DISP_EN	STRING	Hierarchical display label in English

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

This adaptation was not created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this adaptation. The original English edition shall be the authoritative edition. CC-BY-4.0

Citations

Citations:

• FAO. 2025. Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL). https://data.apps.fao.org. Licence: CC-BY-4.0

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Code Editor (JavaScript)

var dataset = ee.FeatureCollection('FAO/GAUL_SIMPLIFIED_500m/2025/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

FAO GAUL 500m Simplified: Global Administrative Unit Layers 2025, First-Level Administrative Units

This version of the GAUL dataset is simplified at 500m. The administrative boundaries dataset at level 1 (sub-national level) is part of the Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL 2025) dataset series which includes information on administrative units for all countries in the world, providing a contribution to the standardization of …

FAO/GAUL_SIMPLIFIED_500m/2025/level1, borders,departments,fao,gaul,infrastructure-boundaries,provinces,states,table,un

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z/2025-12-31T00:00:00Z

-90 -180 90 180

Google Earth Engine

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