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Global Administrative Unit Layers

http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/metadata.show?id=12691&currTab=simple
Description
The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) is an initiative implemented by FAO within the EC-FAO Food Security Programme funded by the European Commission (http://www.foodsecinfoaction.org/News/news_06_06.htm). The GAUL aims at compiling and disseminating the most reliable spatial 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. regions) and second administrative levels (e.g. districts). In addition, when data is available, it provides layers on a country by country basis down to third, fourth and lowers levels. 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 country boundaries provided by the UN Cartographic Unit version 5 (UNCS), d) generating codes using the GAUL Coding System and e) distribute data to the users (see GAUL Doc01 Ver15.pdf) Because the GAUL works at global level, controversial boundaries can not be ignored. The approach of the GAUL is to maintain disputed areas in such a way to preserve national integrity for all disputing countries (see GAUL Doc01 Ver15.pdf and disputed_areas.dbf). The coastal line of the GAUL is mostly compliant with the coast of the International Boundary map delivered by UNCS except for some countries (e.g. Timor-Leste) where it has been updated according to the satellite images (e.g. Landsat ETM). For the next release of the GAUL (GAUL 2008), the coast will be totally reviewed through a comparison with the satellite images. The GAUL is released once a year and the target beneficiary of the GAUL data is the UN community and other authorized international and national institutions/agencies. Data might not be officially validated by authoritative national sources and can not be distributed to the general public. A disclaimer should always accompany any use of the GAUL data. About 26 countries have been updated respect to the previous release (see countries_updated.dbf). The 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 the GAUL on different layers. For this reason the GAUL product is not a single layer but a group of layers, named ?GAUL Set? (see Gaul_Set.pdf).
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