What is the difference between the Administrative Boundaries, Display, and Geotag extracts of World Boundaries Premium?
The Administrative Boundaries extract contains up to 6 administrative levels along with an explicit hierarchy relating each administrative boundary to its parent boundaries by name, ID, and administrative code.
The Display extract combines like-named polygons within a given level into one. It includes up to nine levels, with the addition of Levels 7, 8, and 9 for non-administrative features. Alternate names and admin codes are provided where available.
The Geotag extract is a flattened adaptation of the Display extract and only contains the smallest available geometry for every location where there is at least one unique name, which allows for faster processing, as in reverse geocoding. The total number of objects in this extract is lower because many higher-level geographies are not represented by individual boundaries. Each polygon in this version does, however, contain any available parent feature names.
What are disputed territories and how are they defined?
The Disputed Territories layer indicates where international or regional boundaries are disputed between two or more countries and names the countries laying claim to the disputed region. Such disputed territories are recognized by the United Nations, among other international groups.
How do I classify administrative levels into different layers?
The FEAT_LEVEL field shows the administrative level with which a polygon is associated. FEAT_LEVEL values 1 through 6 can appended along with country codes in the COUNTRY field to create individual display layers for each administrative level in each country.
What is the difference between high resolution and standard postcodes?
In some countries, Precisely can offer highly detailed postal code boundaries representing very small delivery areas. Unit-level polygons in the UK are one such example. High-resolution postcode files can be quite large due to the number of features, which may present issues for some customers, who prefer to have these boundaries separated. Another reason for segmenting out high-resolution postcodes is because certain use cases do not benefit from such granular postal boundaries (for example, having more uniform global postal boundaries for product metrics or identifying advertising regions).
How often is World Boundaries Premium updated?
While new product releases are updated each quarter, not every country will be updated in each release. Precisely has a team of editors who work on different countries and regions based on where we have identified new resources, where real-world changes have occurred, and where we have received customer feedback. Precisely also tracks countries that need to be refreshed, so that no one area is unworked for too long. In general, postal boundaries are updated more frequently because of their dynamic nature compared to administrative areas.
Why is the Esri Shapefile format broken down into country administrative levels?
Due to a two-gigabyte size limitation for shapefiles, Precisely cannot offer a global administrative level in this format.
How do I know which features are in each administrative level?
Unique features and the administrative levels they occupy are listed in the wbp_level_name.xlsx workbook, included in the product delivery file.
What types of names are in the primary name, alternate name, and *_NM_ENG fields?
Primary name fields contain Romanized names in the primary language of the country. Alternate name fields contain the primary language characters for each country for which Precisely has source data, or if the country has an available language. The NM_ENG fields contain primary names in English.
How are administrative codes applied?
The ADMINCODE value contains the classification code assigned to administrative boundaries by a country-specific statistical office, where such information exists and can be sourced. Not all features have these codes. Neighborhoods and built-up areas, for example, do not have such codes because they are not official administrative areas.
Why are some administrative levels not populated for a given country?
There are two main reasons: First, the team at Precisely tries to map each available feature type to the correct administrative level. Sometimes this means skipping one or more levels to match the best possible administrative level that will be consistent with other countries. The second reason could be that a given country only has a small number of administrative levels in reality (small island nations being one example).
Why doesn't World Boundaries Premium have all the postcodes for a given country?
Some postcodes cannot be formed into a boundary. Post office boxes and single businesses having unique postal codes are two such examples. In other cases, Precisely may not have enough delivery information that can be georeferenced to form an accurate boundary.
Why do city names appear in multiple layers? Which one is the best to use?
It's difficult to model a single, consistent city layer nationwide because one location can have multiple place names. A name may be associated with a postal code (postal locality), a neighborhood, a municipality, a metropolitan area, and even a statistical division such as a township. The Precisely team tries to represent as many feature types as possible in a consistent set of administrative levels.
How does Precisely solve for gaps and slivers, and maintain topology?
We maintain country-level geometry and align source data to this base country structure. For alignment, all levels are flat and contain no overlaps. If the layer is a contiguous layer, no gaps will be included.
Why does the product contain invalid US ZIP Codes that start with 00?
These are filler ZIP Codes, assigned mostly to wilderness or uninhabited areas where there is no postal delivery. The intent is to benefit certain use cases by providing contiguous ZIP Code coverage with names for all areas.