Data

Select and download free geographic (GIS) data for any country in the world<br>

Country
-- select a country -- Afghanistan Åland Islands Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Island Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Republic of Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Cook Islands Costa Rica Côte d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Honduras Hongkong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Jersey Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosova Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island North Korea Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestina Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Islands Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Santa Lucia Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States United States Minor Outlying Island Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican Venezuela Vietnam Virgin Islands, U.S Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe

Subject
-- select a subject -- Administrative areas Inland water Roads Railroads Elevation Elevation (country mask) Land cover Land cover (country mask) Population Population (country mask) Gazetteer

Format
"grd" (for DIVA-GIS) GeoTIFF

 

Sources

Subject	Description	Source	Format	Resolution
Administrative areas (boundaries)	Country outlines and administrative subdivisions for all countries. The level of subdivisions that is available varies between countries	GADM	Vector (area)	-
Inland water	Rivers, canals, and lakes. Seperate files for line and area features	Digital Chart of the World	Vector (line and area)	-
Roads	Roads	Digital Chart of the World	Vector (line)	-
Railroads	Railroads	Digital Chart of the World	Vector (line)	-
Elevation	SRTM30 dataset. CGIAR-SRTM data aggregated to 30 seconds	CGIAR SRTM (3 seconds resolution)	Grid	30 seconds
Land cover	Land cover, original data resampled onto a 30 seconds grid	GLC2000	Grid	30 seconds
Population	Population density (old)	CIESIN, 2000. Global gridded population database	Grid	30 seconds
Climate	Monthly climate data	WorldClim	Grid	30 seconds
Gazetteer	A gazetteer is a list of place names and their coordinates. The files you can download here are for use in DIVA for automatic georeferencing (to assign coordinates to places). The files should be placed in the \\gazet directory. This is very old now. There area better services for this.	DBF	-

Formats

The files have been compressed and grouped in ZIP files. You can use programs such as 7-zip, PKZIP or StuffIt to decompress the files.

Vector data are stored as ESRI shapefiles Grid (raster) data are stored as DIVA gridfiles

Each "shapefile" consist of at least three actual files. This is a commonly used format that can be directly used in Arc-anything, DIVA-GIS, and many other programs. It can be imported to most other GIS programs. Shapefiles contain a single class of "vector" data such as points, lines, or polygons.

Gridfiles are used in DIVA-GIS. From DIVA-GIS they can be exported to a number of other grid formats including IDRISI and Arc or to shapefiles.

A gridfile with "country mask" indicates that the areas outside the selected country are masked out. For these areas, the value is "NODATA" (indicating the absence of data for those cells). For the other gridfiles, NODATA is only used for areas covered with water, except for the land cover grids, on which water is a separate class.

A DBF (dBase file) is a dbase format database table.

Resolution

The resolution is the size of each grid cell expressed as the length of one side of one (square) cell. The units are in (arc) degrees, minutes or seconds. When the cell size is small (e.g., 30 seconds), resolution is high. The size in square meters varies with latitude. A cell with a 30 seconds resolution is about 0.8 km2 at the equator and smaller at higher latitudes. High resolution files for large areas (countries) can be very large. This means that it may take a while to download these files, and that you will need a fast PC to work with them.