Australian Maritime Boundaries 2020: Territorial Sea Baselines and Jurisdictional Limits

Australia's maritime jurisdiction, including external territories, is defined by this geospatial dataset. Geoscience Australia developed the data in consultation with other government agencies, with a currency date of December 2020. The data provides a digital representation of limits established under the Seas and Submerged Lands Act 1973 and related legislation.

Use Cases

• Mapping territorial sea baselines and exclusive economic zones based on the legal limits described.
• Analyzing offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage areas under the OPGGSA 2006 based on the included limits.
• Visualizing maritime boundaries with neighboring countries based on treaty data mentioned in the description.
• Supporting legal or administrative decisions regarding state and Northern Territory coastal waters powers.

Strengths

• Developed by the authoritative national agency Geoscience Australia in consultation with key government departments.
• Provides coverage for the entire Australian marine jurisdiction, from latitudes 7°S to 70°S and longitudes 40°E to 175°E.
• Replaces a previous version (AMB2014a), indicating maintained updates with a stated currency of December 2020.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and structure require manual inspection after download.
• The data reflects coastline location within the constraints of source material available at production time, which may introduce positional inaccuracies.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics and geometry types must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia, developed in consultation with the Attorney-General's Department, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Australian Hydrographic Office.

Collection Method

Delineation of legal maritime limits and boundaries, likely derived from legislative instruments and treaties.

Time Range

Currency date is December 2020.

Freshness

Last updated 2026 04 28 13:23:22.374443; freshness should be verified against the stated December 2020 currency.

Geography

Australia including all external territories, covering waters adjacent to the mainland, offshore islands, and External Territories.