GLOBAL
Boundaries and Locations
Global Administrative Areas (GADM)
Boundaries of subnational administrative districts.
Downloadable in shapefile, geodatabase, KMZ, or R formats.
Over 8 million geographical features with name, feature class, and latitude and longitude.
Downloadable as a database dump under a Creative Commons license.
Generalized boundaries for political and physical features in shapefile format. Useful for map-making but not for applications requiring precision. Can also be downloaded as subsets from WeoGeo.
Common and Fundamental Operational Datasets Registry
Shapefiles of data sets necessary for humanitarian response, listed by country. From UN OCHA.
Historical national boundaries and capitals of the post-WWII period.
Length of International Boundaries
International boundary lengths between 1815 and 1997. In Excel or Stata format.
Extracts from crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data.
U.S. Department of State's International Boundaries
Believed to be the most accurate available worldwide international boundary vector line file.
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Provides open data for international development, in which the user is able to search for applications of policy analysis, international development, and resource management needs.
Maxar open data for disaster response.
Diva-GIS: Download Data by Country
Data by country available, such as administrative boundaries, roads, railroads, and land cover.
Contains a phenomenal amount of land use data collection by the United State Geological Survey worldwide.
Esri, ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World
Explore layers, maps, and applications that are part of the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.
The Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) GeoNetwork provides Internet access to interactive maps, satellite imagery, and related spatial databases maintained by FAO and its partners.
GADM (database of global administrative areas)
Administrative areas in this database are countries and lower level subdivisions. GADM describes where these administrative areas are (the "spatial features"), and for each area it provides some attributes, such as the name and variant names.
Site enables the download of openstreetmap data.
The GEO portal is a gateway to global Earth Observation data, information, and services developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
Searchable for international locations and multiple file formats.
This site includes links to international open data government sites, which often includes maps and geospatial data.
Free vector and raster files. Include: cultural vectors such as administrative boundaries (countries), as well as physical vectors. Raster files include: shaded relief, bathymetry (ocean-depth), and natural earth. Public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales.
Select Data from The Demographic and Health Surveys and the U.S. Census for single countries, multiple countries, and all countries in GIS format.
Includes a searchable repository of international-themed datasets.
Information on global elevation models.
USGS links on elevation products.
Historical National Boundaries (University of Minnesota)
Historical national boundaries for key years in history, including 1800, 1914, 1918, 1939, 1945, 1970, 1990, and 2000.
Sample data for educational use.
Users are able to register with a .edu email address for access to elevation products, included USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) products.
Download nautical data to use with supported applications.
A collaborative catalog of open geodata websites around the world.
Environmental Data Explorer (UN)
Holds more than 500 variables covering Freshwater, Population, Forests, Emissions, Climate, Disasters, Health and GDP. Display them as maps, graphs, tables or download the data.
GIS Data Repositories relevant to international humanitarian response
This list of data repositories was compiled by Karen Payne of the University of Georgia's Information Technologies Outreach services, with funding provided by USAID, to point to free downloadable primary geographic datasets that may be useful in international humanitarian response. The repositories are grouped according to the tabs at the bottom of the sheet There are 17 groups of repositories. No longer actively maintained.
OurAirports is a free site where visitors can explore the world's airports. Members create and maintain data records for over 50,000 airports around the world. Includes data about airport locations, elevations, runways, communication frequencies, and radio navigation aids.
The Demographic & Health Surveys Program Spatial Data Repository
Provides geographically-linked health and demographic data from the DHS Program and the U.S. Census Bureau for mapping in a geographic information system (GIS), including survey boundaries, indicator data, and population estimates.
This page contains a categorized list of links to over 500 sites providing freely available geographic datasets. Beware: The data linked to may be inaccurate, incomplete, or just plain wrong. As always, critically examine the data you are using, look at what organization produced it and what agenda they may have, and beware that there are disputes over some of the data (particularly country boundaries).
World Resources Institute Maps & Data
Use the Advanced Search option to search by type, topic, or geography. Contains data on a variety of themes for a large number of countries.
Guide to data by country (from MIT Library)
Non-comprehensive list of GIS data by (non-US) country.