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The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) 2024

Technical guidelines

Year of publication 2025

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 18 p.

Author Franceschini, G.; Khan, A.; Moretti, L.; Nyabuti, K.; Asif, M.; Bezuidenhoudt, E.; Morteo, K.;

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Booklet

ISBN 978-92-5-139605-6

To cite or share https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4262en

Synopsis (short abstract) The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) developed the Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) dataset in the late 1990s to address a critical need in the growing field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for accurate representations of political sub-national administrative boundaries. GAUL became a successful story and an important asset of FAO’s geospatial infrastructure, widely regarded for its ease of use, accuracy, and well-defined updating protocol, which included regular annual releases. Disseminated through the FAO GeoNetwork, it played a significant role in supporting numerous research projects and knowledge-based products within FAO and beyond. In addition to visualizing sub-national boundaries, GAUL was instrumental in mapping sub-national statistics across the thematic areas of FAO's work. Unfortunately, updates to the dataset were discontinued in 2015, and despite its wide usage and a large user community, no further versions were subsequently released.With the launch of the FAO Agro-Informatics Platform (AIP), FAO unlocked millions of geospatial data layers from different domains and sources, including food security indicators and agricultural statistics, with the objective to serve as the key enabling tool for FAO's Hand-In-Hand (HIH) Initiative and stakeholders working in the food and agriculture sector. The Organization decided thus to revitalize the GAUL project. This technical guidelines details the technical content and use of the GAUL dataset.

Cite this content as:

Franceschini, G., Khan, A., Moretti, L.,Nyabuti, K., Asif, M., Bezuidenhoudt, E. and Morteo, K. 2025. The Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) 2024.Technical guidelines. Rome, FAO

https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4262en

Language English

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