Australian Maritime Boundaries: Legal Limits and Offshore Zones, 2014

Geoscience Australia's Australian Maritime Boundaries (AMB) data is a digital representation of Australia's maritime limits and zones as established under the Seas and Submerged Lands Act 1973. The dataset includes territorial baselines, outer limits of maritime zones, and boundaries from treaties with neighbouring countries, covering waters from 7°S to 70°S and 40°E to 175°E. This version, AMB2014a, was published in May 2014 and includes technical amendments based on user feedback.

Use Cases

• Mapping legal maritime zones for regulatory compliance based on the described limits and boundaries.
• Analyzing offshore petroleum and greenhouse gas storage areas based on the scheduled area limits referenced in the description.
• Visualizing treaty-defined maritime boundaries with neighbouring countries as mentioned in the dataset.
• Integrating coastal and jurisdictional baselines for marine spatial planning based on the territorial sea baseline data.

Strengths

• Definitive legal representation of maritime zones under Australian law, as stated in the description.
• Geographic coverage spans the entire Australian marine jurisdiction, including external territories.
• Coordinates are supplied in the GDA94 datum, which is functionally equivalent to WGS84.
• Developed by Geoscience Australia in consultation with other Commonwealth Government agencies.

Limitations

• Data currency is May 2014; legal or coastal changes after this date are not reflected.
• The description notes that in the event of an inconsistency, the legal limits under legislation prevail over the digital data.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia

Collection Method

Delineation of legal maritime limits and boundaries under Australian legislation.

Time Range

Currency: May 2014.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-25 15:33:43.181419; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australian marine jurisdiction, approximately 7°S to 70°S and 40°E to 175°E.