Australian Regional Development Administrative Boundaries 2014-15

2014-15 boundaries for Regional Development Australia (RDA) administrative regions across Australia. The dataset was created and is maintained by the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, with updates reflecting changes to Local Government Area boundaries and regional adjustments. It includes notes on historical boundary changes up to 2014.

Use Cases

• Analyze regional policy coverage by mapping RDA region polygons against demographic data.
• Study historical administrative changes, such as the transfer of Lord Howe Island between RDA Northern Rivers and Mid North Coast regions in 2011.
• Assess the impact of Local Government Area amalgamations and deamalgamations, like the formation of the City of Greater Geraldton in 2011, on regional development boundaries.
• Model service delivery or resource allocation across Australian states and territories using the single-region definitions for NT, Tas, and ACT.
• Investigate boundary complexities, such as the division of South Australia's Outback Communities Authority LGA across three RDA regions.

Strengths

• Boundaries are derived from the authoritative ABS LGA 2014 boundary dataset.
• Documentation provides specific historical change logs for regions like Lord Howe Island and council amalgamations.
• Covers all Australian states, territories, and includes notes on external territories.

Limitations

• The core data reflects the 2014-15 period and may not represent current boundaries without subsequent updates.
• Specific row counts, column names, and dataset size metrics are unavailable.
• Some region definitions, like in South Australia, are based on non-LGA boundaries from 2007, introducing potential inconsistency.

Provenance

Source

Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.

Collection Method

Built from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) LGA 2014 boundary dataset, with adjustments for RDA-specific regional definitions.

Time Range

2014-15, with documented changes from 2011-2014.

Freshness

Dataset metadata was last updated in April 2026, but the underlying boundary data is from the 2014-15 period.

Geography

Australia, including states, territories, and external territories like Christmas Island and Cocos/Keeling Islands.