Home Documentation Overview Global Administrative Areas (GADM)

Global Administrative Areas (GADM)

This page describes the foundational data layer of global administrative areas.

Citation Information

Title: Global Administrative Areas

Source: www.gadm.org

Date: 2012

Citation: Global Administrative Areas ( 2012). GADM database of Global Administrative Areas, version 2.0. [online] URL: www.gadm.org.

Description

GADM is a spatial database of the location of the world’s administrative areas (or adminstrative boundaries) for use in GIS and similar software. Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions such as provinces, departments, bibhag, bundeslander, daerah istimewa, fivondronana, krong, landsvæðun, opština, sous-préfectures, counties, and thana. GADM describes where these administrative areas are (the “spatial features”), and for each area it provides some attributes, such as the name and variant names.

The data are available as shapefile, ESRI geodatabase, RData, and Google Earth kmz format. Shapefiles can be used for most mapping and “GIS” software. You can download a free program such as Q-GIS or DIVA-GIS. The RData files can be used in R with the ‘sp’ package loaded.

© Copyright 2012 GLOBE. All Rights Reserved.
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