datapakistanshapefile
I'm currently looking for a shapefile for Pakistan with the current district borders. So far I found something on https://gadm.org/. Unfortunately the shapefile there seems not to be up-to-date, as e.g. one district has been split into two in 1996, but in the shapefile it's still one district (and in some other cases the names seem to be the old ones).
Is there any "general source" with newer shapefiles (also for other countries)?
If you simply want to dissolve the edges and are happy with having one large multipolygon feature of all buildings, you can simply use the fTools "Dissolve" tool ("Vector/Geoprocessing/Dissolve").
If you want to keep the attributes (in the case of OS Vector that would only be the ID, which seems to be rather arbitrary), you can split the dissolved vector layer and then assign the attributes of the original undissolved layer using "Join attributes by location":
This is a subset of two OS buildings shapefiles that were merged into a single shapefile using "Vector/Data management/Merge shapefiles into one". The colours are assigned randomly to show the individual features:
This is the result of the "Dissolve" tool: All features have been dissolved into a single feature with the ID of the first object, the break in the three central buildings is gone:
After splitting the feature using "Vector/Geometry/Multipart to singleparts", the buildings are individual features again, but they all have the same ID:
Running "Vector/Data Management tools/Join attributes by location" with the split layer as the target and the original merged layer as the Join vector layer, the buildings are reassigned their individual IDs:
You don't need to create an extra field to do this. The workflow in Arcgis desktop is as the following:
1- Make a selection (Dates Over 2013) and export to a separate shape file.
2- Revert the selection and export to a separate shape file.
Snapshots in ArcGIS:
Best Answer
For official boundaries you should go to the Humanitarian Data Exchange (data.humdata.org). There you will find the shapefiles that the governments themselves submit to UN OCHA for humanitarian purposes, so it should be the validated one. Note that these boundaries might differ from the boundaries presented by other countries, or by those agreed upon by the UN, since territorial disputes can be at play.