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Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) 2024

The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) dataset is developed and owned by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It provides a comprehensive spatial dataset of sub-national administrative units for all countries in the world, consistent with the United Nations (UN) delineation of international boundaries.

GAUL 2024 includes two datasets: GAUL 2024 Subnational Level 1 (GAUL_2024_L1) and GAUL 2024 Subnational Level 2 (GAUL_2024_L2). The dataset was developed by consolidating national-level data from relevant sources, which involved editing geometries, standardizing attributes into a unified table structure, and preparing metadata for each country. You can find the technical documentation here

Data Sources

GAUL 2024 was compiled from multiple sources in order of priority:

  1. Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) geoportal - authoritative subnational boundary information managed by the UN Geographic Information Section
  2. Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) platform - hosted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
  3. National Providers - relevant national authorities identified through online research or FAO national representations
  4. GAUL 2015 - used when no other data sources were available

Technical Details

  • Coordinate System: WGS84 (EPSG:4326)
  • Data structure: Seamless and topologically corrected geometries
  • Coding system: Unique numeric codes within and across administrative levels
  • Country (level 0): 100-999
  • Level 1 unit: 1,000-99,999
  • Level 2 unit: 100,000-899,999
  • Waterbody: 900,000-999,000

Citation

Franceschini, G., Khan, A., Moretti, L., Nyabuti, K., Asif, M., Bezuidenhoudt, E. and Morteo, K. 2025. The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) 2024. Technical guidelines. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4262en

Attributes

Expand to show attribute information for geometries
Field name Description Data type Length
iso3_code ISO3 code Text 3
map_code Map code – used for joining statistics Text 3
gaul0_code GAUL 2024 code at country level Long
gaul0_name Name of administrative unit at country level Text 100
gaul1_code GAUL 2024 code at first level Long
gaul1_name Name of administrative unit at first level Text 100
gaul2_code GAUL 2024 code at second level Long
gaul2_name Name of administrative unit at second level Text 100
continent Name of the continent Text 12
disp_en Display label in English Text 255

GAUL

Earth Engine Snippet

var GAUL_2024_L1 = ee.FeatureCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/FAO/GAUL/GAUL_2024_L1");
var GAUL_2024_L2 = ee.FeatureCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/FAO/GAUL/GAUL_2024_L2");

Sample Code: https://code.earthengine.google.com/?scriptPath=users/sat-io/awesome-gee-catalog-examples:population-socioeconomics/GAUL-2024

License

GAUL is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). When using GAUL data, proper attribution must be given as follows: Some third-party data included in GAUL may have different terms of use. Users are responsible for checking and complying with any additional restrictions.

Note

  • GAUL 2024 should not be considered an authoritative or official representation of subnational boundaries. Its primary objective is to facilitate the representation of subnational statistics and attributes.
  • Country names in GAUL 2024 follow the Names of Countries and Territories (NOCS) database.
  • The dataset adopts the Latin alphabet to represent place names in their native languages, preserving accents and diacritics where applicable.
  • Some administrative units may be labeled as "Administrative unit not available" when the data is not available.
  • Waterbodies are included with unique code IDs greater than 900,000.

Produced and maintained by: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations

Curated in Earth Engine by: Samapriya Roy

Keywords: Administrative boundaries, Geospatial data, Subnational boundaries, FAO, Administrative units, International boundaries, Humanitarian data, SALB

Last updated: 2025-04-02

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