A PDF map that shows the counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at 1 April 2023. (File Size - 583 KB)

Counties were formerly administrative units across the whole UK. Due to various administrative restructurings however, the only administrative areas still referred to as counties are the nonmetropolitan (shire) counties of England. The English metropolitan counties, although no longer administrative units, are also used for statistical purposes.

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https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/boundary-line#technical

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Source:

https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/BoundaryLine

Licence:

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

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Data, code and materials from a discrete experiment to test the validity of an Bayesian areal wombling algorithm for predicting social boundaries. The experiment was conducted as a part of project ‘Life at the Frontier: Researching the Impact of Social Frontiers on the Social Mobility and Integration of Migrants’ (2020-2023; NordForsk/ESRC, project no 95193), and experiment data was collected in Rotherham (UK).About the experimentEach border on a map is assigned a boundary value based on how dissimilar the adjacent neighbourhoods are (higher = more dissimilar = more likely to be a social boundary).The experiment was carried out as follows:- We created three maps of the same area with different boundaries using the Bayesian areal wombling approach.- Map A contained the boundaries with the highest boundary values, whilst map C had the lowest boundary values. Map B contained boundaries that were in between.- During an interview, participants were then shown pairs of maps and asked which map in each pair best corresponds to local community boundaries.- The sequence and order of the maps shown were randomised.- Assuming that residents and experts can recognise (but not necessarily recall) social boundaries, we conjecture that participants would choose the map containing borders with higher boundary values.Hypothesis: We hypothesise that participants will agree with the predictions of the areal wombling algorithm and choose boundaries with higher boundary values.Null hypothesis: Participants are not more or less likely to choose boundaries with higher boundary values.Aside from testing a hypothesis, another motivation behind the study is to explore the feasibility of the method for future replications and follow-up research.More informationThis study was approved by the University of Sheffield ethics committee (application number 042378).Please read the README file for a more detailed description of the content of this repository.

The current counties of England are defined by the ceremonial counties, a collective name for the county areas to which are appointed a Lord Lieutenant. The office of Lord Lieutenant was created in the reign of Henry VIII. The Lord Lieutenant is the chief officer of the county and representative of the Crown. Whenever the Queen visits an area she will be accompanied by the Lord Lieutenant of that area. Legally the ceremonial counties are defined by the Lieutenancies Act 1997 as ‘Counties and areas for the purposes of the lieutenancies in Great Britain’ with reference to the areas used for local government.

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https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/boundary-line#technical

​

Source:

https://osdatahub.os.uk/downloads/open/BoundaryLine

Licence:

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

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This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties and Unitary Authorities, in the United Kingdom, as at December 2023.

A PDF map that shows the local authority districts, counties and unitary authorities in the United Kingdom as at April 2023. The map has been created to show the United Kingdom from country level down to local authority district level. (File Size - 1,909 KB)

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties and Unitary Authorities, in the United Kingdom, as at December 2022.

This global accessibility map enumerates land-based travel time to the nearest densely-populated area for all areas between 85 degrees north and 60 degrees south for a nominal year 2015. Densely-populated areas are defined as contiguous areas with 1,500 or more inhabitants per square kilometre or a majority of built-up land cover types coincident with a population centre of at least 50,000 inhabitants. This map was produced through a collaboration between MAP (University of Oxford), Google, the European Union Joint Research Centre (JRC), and the University of Twente, Netherlands.The underlying datasets used to produce the map include roads (comprising the first ever global-scale use of Open Street Map and Google roads datasets), railways, rivers, lakes, oceans, topographic conditions (slope and elevation), landcover types, and national borders. These datasets were each allocated a speed or speeds of travel in terms of time to cross each pixel of that type. The datasets were then combined to produce a "friction surface"; a map where every pixel is allocated a nominal overall speed of travel based on the types occurring within that pixel. Least-cost-path algorithms (running in Google Earth Engine and, for high-latitude areas, in R) were used in conjunction with this friction surface to calculate the time of travel from all locations to the nearest (in time) city. The cities dataset used is the high-density-cover product created by the Global Human Settlement Project. Each pixel in the resultant accessibility map thus represents the modelled shortest time from that location to a city. Authors: D.J. Weiss, A. Nelson, H.S. Gibson, W. Temperley, S. Peedell, A. Lieber, M. Hancher, E. Poyart, S. Belchior, N. Fullman, B. Mappin, U. Dalrymple, J. Rozier, T.C.D. Lucas, R.E. Howes, L.S. Tusting, S.Y. Kang, E. Cameron, D. Bisanzio, K.E. Battle, S. Bhatt, and P.W. Gething. A global map of travel time to cities to assess inequalities in accessibility in 2015. (2018). Nature. doi:10.1038/nature25181

Processing notes: Data were processed from numerous sources including OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, Land Cover mapping, and others, to generate a global friction surface of average land-based travel speed. This accessibility surface was then derived from that friction surface via a least-cost-path algorithm finding at each location the closest point from global databases of population centres and densely-populated areas. Please see the associated publication for full details of the processing.

Source: https://map.ox.ac.uk/research-project/accessibility_to_cities/

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties, in England, as at December 2024.

An exercise was conducted by the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) in Northern Ireland (NI) in collaboration with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport (DTTaS) in the Republic of Ireland (RoI), to map the border crossings on the public road network between the two jurisdictions.

The file contains two datasets:

1. NI Border Crossing Points

2. NI Border Crossing Lines

Note: This exercise was confined to public roads only, therefore private roads to public road border crossings are not included in this dataset.

Geologic Borders of the 1:500 000 Geological map of the Republic of Macedonia.

This digitally compiled map includes geology, oil and gas fields, and geologic provinces of Europe. The oil and gas map is part of a worldwide series released on CD-ROM by the World Energy Project of the U.S. Geological Survey. For data management purposes the world is divided into eight energy regions corresponding approximately to the economic regions of the world as defined by the U.S. Department of State. Europe (Region 4) including Turkey (Region 2) includes Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, Vatican City, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man, Svalbard

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Counties, in England, as at December 2023.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Countries, in the United Kingdom, as at December 2024.

In the century between Napoleon's defeat and the outbreak of the First World War (known as the "Pax Britannica"), the British Empire grew to become the largest and most powerful empire in the world. At its peak in the 1910s and 1920s, it encompassed almost one quarter of both the world's population and its land surface, and was known as "the empire on which the sun never sets". The empire's influence could be felt across the globe, as Britain could use its position to affect trade and economies in all areas of the world, including many regions that were not part of the formal empire (for example, Britain was able to affect trading policy in China for over a century, due to its control of Hong Kong and the neighboring colonies of India and Burma). Some historians argue that because of its economic, military, political and cultural influence, nineteenth century Britain was the closest thing to a hegemonic superpower that the world ever had, and possibly ever will have. "Rule Britannia" Due to the technological and logistical restrictions of the past, we will never know the exact borders of the British Empire each year, nor the full extent of its power. However, by using historical sources in conjunction with modern political borders, we can gain new perspectives and insights on just how large and influential the British Empire actually was. If we transpose a map of all former British colonies, dominions, mandates, protectorates and territories, as well as secure territories of the East India Trading Company (EIC) (who acted as the precursor to the British Empire) onto a current map of the world, we can see that Britain had a significant presence in at least 94 present-day countries (approximately 48 percent). This included large territories such as Australia, the Indian subcontinent, most of North America and roughly one third of the African continent, as well as a strategic network of small enclaves (such as Gibraltar and Hong Kong) and islands around the globe that helped Britain to maintain and protect its trade routes. The sun sets... Although the data in this graph does not show the annual population or size of the British Empire, it does give some context to how Britain has impacted and controlled the development of the world over the past four centuries. From 1600 until 1920, Britain's Empire expanded from a small colony in Newfoundland, a failing conquest in Ireland, and early ventures by the EIC in India, to Britain having some level of formal control in almost half of all present-day countries. The English language is an official language in all inhabited continents, its political and bureaucratic systems are used all over the globe, and empirical expansion helped Christianity to become the most practiced major religion worldwide. In the second half of the twentieth century, imperial and colonial empires were eventually replaced by global enterprises. The United States and Soviet Union emerged from the Second World War as the new global superpowers, and the independence movements in longstanding colonies, particularly Britain, France and Portugal, gradually succeeded. The British Empire finally ended in 1997 when it seceded control of Hong Kong to China, after more than 150 years in charge. Today, the United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries, and it is responsible for three crown dependencies and fourteen overseas territories, although the legacy of the British Empire can still be seen, and it's impact will be felt for centuries to come.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for the historical administrative counties with county boroughs in England and Wales as at Census Day 1921.

The boundaries available are: (BGC) Generalised resolution - clipped to the coastline (Mean High Water mark).

Contains both Ordnance Survey and ONS Intellectual Property Rights.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Parishes in England and Wales, as at May 2023.

This file contains the digital vector boundaries for Regions in England as at December 2024.

In June 2000 the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) under the auspices of the Department of Public Enterprise (later moved to the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources in 2002) awarded a contract to Global Ocean Technologies Limited (GOTECH) to undertake the Irish National Seabed Survey (INSS), Zone 3 Hydrographic Survey. This area, of some 413,760 square Kilometres, stretches from the 200 metre water depth line on the Western Seaboard of Ireland, westward into the full oceanic depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The INSS mapped to approximately the 200m contour. The project was completed in 2006.The INFOMAR programme is a joint venture between Geological Survey Ireland (GSI) and Marine Institute (MI) and is the successor to the Irish National Seabed Survey. INFOMAR aims to survey the remaining shelf and coastal waters between 2006 to 2026.It is a vector dataset. Vector data portrays the world using points, lines and polygons (areas). The zone data is shown as polygons. Each polygon holds information on the zone number, zone part, area (km2) and perimeter (m).The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international agreement that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. Articles 3 and 4 of UNCLOS sets out what a territorial sea is and what is permitted. Territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22 km; 14 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state, although foreign ships (military and civilian) are allowed innocent passage through it, or transit passage for straits; this sovereignty also extends to the airspace over and seabed below. Adjustment of these boundaries is called, in international law, maritime delimitation.A state's territorial sea extends up to 12 nm (22 km; 14 mi) from its baseline. A nautical mile is 1,852 metres. If this would overlap with another state's territorial sea, the border is taken as the median point between the states' baselines, unless the states in question agree otherwise. A state can also choose to claim a smaller territorial sea.It is a vector dataset. Vector data portrays the world using points, lines and polygons (areas). The data is shown as a line.The exclusive economic zone is an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, subject to the specific legal regime established in this Part, under which the rights and jurisdiction of the coastal State and the rights and freedoms of other States are governed by the relevant provisions of this Convention. An exclusive economic zone, as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including energy production from water and wind.It stretches from the outer limit of the territorial sea (22.224 Km or 12 NM from the baseline) out to a maximum of 370.4 Km (or 200 nautical miles) from the coast of the state in question. It is also referred to as a maritime continental margin and, in colloquial usage, may include the continental shelf. The term does not include either the territorial sea or the continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical mile limit. The difference between the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone is that the first confers full sovereignty over the waters, whereas the second is merely a "sovereign right" which refers to the coastal state's rights below the surface of the sea. The surface waters are international waters.It is a vector dataset. Vector data portrays the world using points, lines and polygons (areas). The data is shown as a line.The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international agreement that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. Article 76 of UNCLOS sets out the definition of what the continental shelf is and what is permitted. The Geoscience Regulatory Office (GSRO) (formerly Petroleum Affairs Division (PAD)) a division of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC) has statutory responsibility for Ireland’s Continental Shelf.A state wishing to extend its shelf beyond 200 nautical miles must make a submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Ireland’s continental shelf physically extends beyond 200 nautical miles to the west and south of the country and, working together, the Departments of Foreign Affairs and of the Environment, Climate and Communications have in all made three submissions to the Commission – in 2005 in relation to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, then jointly with France, Spain and the UK for the seabed of the Celtic Sea and Bay of Biscay, and finally for the Hatton Rockall area of the North East Atlantic in 2009.The submission concerning the Porcupine Abyssal Plain successfully resulted in the addition of 39,000 km² of seabed to the State’s continental shelf. The Commission has also made recommendations that would enclose an area of approx. 80,000 km² of seabed in the Celtic Sea and Bay of Biscay and the division of this area is currently under negotiation between the four countries concerned. In addition, regular discussions have taken place for a number of years between Ireland and the UK (who agreed continental shelf boundaries in 1988), Iceland and the Faroe Islands in relation to overlapping claims in the North East Atlantic.It is a vector dataset. Vector data portrays the world using points, lines and polygons (areas). The data is shown as a line.