U.S. Military Installation Boundaries from 2019 TIGER/Line

U.S. national shapefile contains polygon boundaries for military installations. The data was updated in 2012 through collaboration with the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. It is extracted from the Census Bureau's Master Address File/TIGER Database.

Use Cases

• Map military installation boundaries for national security or infrastructure planning using polygon geometry.
• Analyze the spatial distribution of Air Force, Army, Marine, Navy, and Coast Guard installations across the United States.
• Integrate military installation polygons with other TIGER/Line layers for demographic or land use analysis.
• Use the seamless, non-overlapping polygon data to calculate total area occupied by military facilities.

Strengths

• Data originates from the authoritative U.S. Census Bureau MAF/TIGER Database.
• Boundaries are seamless with no overlaps or gaps, forming a complete national file.
• Updates were made in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.

Limitations

• The core boundary updates are from 2012, which may not reflect recent base expansions, closures, or realignments.
• The dataset lacks attribute columns (e.g., installation name, size, type) which limits analytical depth without joining to other sources.
• As a 2019 vintage file, it does not include potential changes from the 2020 Census.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Extracted from the Master Address File/TIGER Database; boundaries obtained from DoD and DHS.

Time Range

2019 data vintage with boundary updates from 2012.

Freshness

Data vintage is 2019, with last platform update in January 2021.

Geography

United States (nation)