Great Britain Country Boundaries at December 2015 with Multiple Resolutions

Digital vector boundaries for countries in Great Britain as of 31 December 2015. The dataset contains five boundary versions, including full resolution, generalised (20m), super generalised (200m), and ultra generalised (500m) versions clipped to the coastline. It is provided by the Office for National Statistics and contains Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

Use Cases

• Create thematic maps of Great Britain based on the super generalised (200m) boundaries for faster rendering.
• Perform spatial joins with other UK datasets using the full resolution boundaries for high-precision analysis.
• Develop lightweight web mapping applications using the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries to reduce data transfer size.
• Analyze coastal administrative extents by comparing the full resolution 'extent of the realm' and 'clipped to coastline' versions.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary resolutions, with file sizes ranging from 168 KB for ultra generalised to 29 MB for full resolution clipped.
• Contains boundaries as of a specific snapshot date (31 December 2015), offering temporal consistency.
• Includes both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights, indicating authoritative source data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is from 2015; administrative boundaries may have changed, limiting current applicability.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical modeling.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics (UK), incorporating Ordnance Survey data.

Collection Method

Likely digitized and generalized from official cartographic sources.

Time Range

Snapshot as of 31 December 2015.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:16.850645; freshness should be verified as the underlying data is from 2015.

Geography

Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales).