World Bank Official Boundaries¶

The World Bank Official Boundaries project publishes high-resolution, regularly updated global administrative boundaries as open data, designed and endorsed by the World Bank for robust, cross-sectoral geospatial analysis. Developed through collaboration between the Development Data Group's Space2Stats program and the Cartography Unit from Global Corporate Solutions Interactive Media, this dataset delivers detailed boundaries at the national (Admin 0), provincial (Admin 1), and district (Admin 2) levels. It improves upon former datasets by offering higher resolution, standardized formats, and more frequent updates, promoting transparency and inclusion by making these foundational data resources openly available to researchers, development organizations, and partners worldwide.

The dataset addresses the previous lack of an updated, standardized source of World Bank boundary data and provides a consistent alternative to public datasets like GADM and GeoBoundaries, meeting WBG cartographic standards and following consistent update schedules. For detailed context, methodology, and case studies on how boundary data supports evidence-based development, see Mapping progress: How the World Bank is improving access to global administrative boundaries - World Bank Data Blog (October 28, 2025)

Data Sources¶

The World Bank Official Boundaries were compiled from multiple authoritative 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 official channels
4. World Bank GAD - legacy World Bank Global Administrative Divisions dataset when no other sources were available

Citation¶

When referencing the World Bank Official Boundaries, follow these recommended citation practices:

APA Style:

The World Bank. (2025). World Bank Official Boundaries [Data set].
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038272

Chicago Style:

The World Bank. 2025. "World Bank Official Boundaries." Washington, D.C.:
World Bank. https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0038272

Attributes¶

Earth Engine Snippet¶

var WB_Boundaries_ADM0 = ee.FeatureCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/WORLD-BANK/WBGAD/WB_GAD_ADM0");
var WB_Boundaries_ADM1 = ee.FeatureCollection("projects/sat-io/open-datasets/WORLD-BANK/WBGAD/WB_GAD_ADM1");
var WB_Boundaries_ADM2 = ee.FeatureCollection("rojects/sat-io/open-datasets/WORLD-BANK/WBGAD/WB_GAD_ADM2");

Sample Code: https://code.earthengine.google.com/?scriptPath=users/sat-io/awesome-gee-catalog-examples:population-socioeconomics/WB-GAD-2025

License¶

The World Bank Official Boundaries are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Users are free to:

Produced and maintained by: World Bank Development Data Group

Curated in Earth Engine by: Samapriya Roy

Keywords: World Bank, Administrative boundaries, Geospatial data, Subnational boundaries, Space2Stats, Development indicators, SALB, P-Codes, GAUL, Official boundaries

Last updated on GEE: 2025-11-02

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