 |
 Level 1 administrative divisions of Germany, created from GADM data | |
| Original author | Robert J. Hijmans |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 2009 |
| Stable release | 4.1
/ 16 July 2022[1] |
| Written in | GeoPackage |
| Type | Geographic Information Systems, Data visualization |
| License | Copyrighted with academic friendly policy |
| Website | gadm |
GADM, the Database of Global Administrative Areas, is a high-resolution database of country administrative areas, with a goal of "all countries, at all levels, at any time period."[2] Although it is a public database, GADM has a higher spatial resolution than other free databases,[3] and also higher than commercial software such as ArcGIS.[4] Those sources are commonly use to complete data analysis with data visualisation such as data plots, choropleth map, etc.[5][6]
The database is available in a few export formats, including shapefiles that are used in most common GIS applications.[7] Files for use with the data analysis language R are also available.
GADM is not freely available for commercial use. The GADM project created the spatial data for many countries from spatial databases provided by national governments, NGO, and/or from maps and lists of names available on the Internet (e.g. from Wikipedia).
