Data – Seeking World Map with Boundaries of Regions and Communities for Commercial Use

data

I am looking for a vector file worldmap which should include as many boundaries reaching to a very small level (like ZIP-Codes/small communities/etc) as possible.

The data of Natural Earth is quite good, but does not go that much in detail. The GADM data would be nearly perfect, but it is not allowed for company use.

Requirements:

  • Consistent boundaries for nearby countries (no overlapping!).
  • As much detail as possible (refering to boundaries).

  • Country boundaries and subdivisions should be separated.

  • The data is for company use, therefore I should be able to buy it, or it should be free to use for companies.

I also thought of extracting it from the OpenStreetMap data. Do you think this is possible?

Best Answer

I'd suggest to have a look at TomTom offer. I've used their MultiNet product. This dataset is mainly developed with navigation in mind, but some of the layers provided cover administrative division and zip code areas.

At least 10 levels of Administrative Orders are defined for each country. The highest level, Order 0, is always the Country, which is made up of all lower-level units. Order 8 is also always present. The name of this level and the extension of its units are country dependent. Order 8 is the lowest level that covers the whole territory of the country (source).

I only used data for Switzerland but they seem to maintain global coverage:

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I cannot comment on pricing and licensing of the product, but perhaps you could get a deal of getting access to admin boundaries only (which, if possible, could hopefully reduce the price).

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