The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) compiles and disseminates the best available information on administrative units for all the countries in the world, providing a contribution to the standardization of the spatial dataset representing administrative units. The GAUL always maintains global layers with a unified coding system at country, first (e.g. departments), and second administrative levels (e.g. districts). Where data is available, it provides layers on a country by country basis down to third, fourth, and lowers levels.
GAUL keeps track of administrative units that has been changed, added or dismissed in the past for political causes. Changes implemented in different years are recorded in GAUL on different layers. For this reason the GAUL product is not a single layer but a group of layers, named "GAUL Set" (see "ReleaseNoteGAUL2015" in the GAUL 2015 Documentation).
GAUL 2015 is the eighth release of the GAUL Set.
Citation: © 1990-2014 GAUL
Supplemental Information:
The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) is an initiative that was implemented by FAO within the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) and AfricaFertilizer.org projects.
Data lineage:
The overall methodology consists in a) collecting the best available data from most reliable sources, b) establishing validation periods of the geographic features (when possible), c) adding selected data to the global layer based on the last country boundaries map provided by the UN Cartographic Unit (UNCS), d) generating codes using GAUL Coding System, and e) distribute data to the users (see "Technical Aspects of the GAUL Distribution Set" in the GAUL 2015 Documentation). Note that some administrative units are multi-polygon features.
Because GAUL works at global level, unsettled territories are reported. The approach of GAUL is to deal with these areas in such a way to preserve national integrity for all disputing countries (see G2015_DisputedAreas.dbf).
5 territories have been updated in the GAUL 2015 with respect to the previous release and the coastline of American countries and other special areas have been updated using Open Street Map (see "ReleaseNoteGAUL2015" in the GAUL 2015 Documentation).
GAUL keeps track of administrative units that has been changed, added or dismissed in the past for political causes. Changes implemented in different years are recorded in GAUL on different layers. For this reason the GAUL product is not a single layer but a group of layers, named "GAUL Set" (see ReleaseNoteGAUL2015.pdf).
Resource constraints:
The GAUL license is subject to the constraints and limitations of the data license of the International Boundary Dataset of the UN Cartographic Section and the one of the Second Administrative Level Boundary (SALB) data (for the countries that use this dataset).
Terms of Use
The GAUL dataset is distributed to the United Nations and other authorized international and national institutions/agencies. FAO grants a license to use, download and print the materials contained in the GAUL dataset solely for non-commercial purposes and in accordance with the conditions specified in the data license. The full GAUL Data License document is available for downloading.
Data might not be officially validated by authoritative national sources and cannot be distributed to the general public. A disclaimer should always accompany any use of GAUL data. More info on the disclaimer content here.
Online resources:
GAUL License
GAUL Disclaimer
GAUL Documentation
GAUL Additional Attributes
