Great Britain Country Boundaries at December 2016 with Multiple Generalization Levels

Office for National Statistics provides digital vector boundaries for Countries in Great Britain, as at December 2016. The dataset contains five boundary versions, including full resolution and four levels of generalization clipped to the coastline. It is made available under the OGL-UK-3.0 license.

Use Cases

• Create national-scale maps of Great Britain based on the ultra generalised (500m) boundaries for fast rendering.
• Perform spatial analysis of country-level data in Great Britain using the full resolution boundaries clipped to the coastline.
• Integrate administrative boundaries into a web mapping service using the generalised (20m) version for a balance of detail and performance.
• Visualize the extent of the realm for maritime or territorial studies using the full resolution - extent of the realm boundaries.

Strengths

• Provides five distinct boundary versions, from full resolution (24-29 MB) to ultra generalised (150 KB), catering to different use cases.
• Contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights, indicating authoritative source data.
• Boundaries are temporally specific, representing the administrative geography as at December 2016.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analytical projects.
• Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:08.501094; freshness should be verified as boundaries may have changed since the reference date of December 2016.

Provenance

Source

Office for National Statistics, containing Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

Collection Method

Likely digitized from official cartographic sources.

Time Range

December 2016

Freshness

Reference date is December 2016. Platform metadata indicates a last update in 2026, likely for the listing itself.

Geography

Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales)