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:
- Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) geoportal - authoritative subnational boundary information managed by the UN Geographic Information Section
- Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) platform - hosted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
- National Providers - relevant national authorities identified through online research or FAO national representations
- 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 |
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");
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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