The boundaries of five different geographic areas -- North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia -- are digitally represented in this collection of data files that can be used in the production of computer maps. Each of the five areas is encoded in three distinct files: (1) coastline, islands, and lakes, (2) rivers, and (3) international boundaries. There is an additional file for North America (Part 4: North America: Internal Boundaries) delineating state lines in the United States and provincial boundaries in Canada. The data in each of the files is hierarchically structured into subordinate geographic features and ranks, which may be used for output plotting symbol definition. The mapping scale used to encode the data ranged from 1:1 million to 1:4 million.

Abstract (en): The boundaries of five different geographic areas -- North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia -- are digitally represented in this collection of data files that can be used in the production of computer maps. Each of the five areas is encoded in three distinct files: (1) coastline, islands, and lakes, (2) rivers, and (3) international boundaries. There is an additional file for North America (Part 4: North America: Internal Boundaries) delineating state lines in the United States and provincial boundaries in Canada. The data in each of the files is hierarchically structured into subordinate geographic features and ranks, which may be used for output plotting symbol definition. The mapping scale used to encode the data ranged from 1:1 million to 1:4 million. 2006-01-18 File CB8376.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads. (1) There are seven variables and an unknown number of cases for each file. The number of records per case varies according to the number of latitude and longitude coordinates needed to display the particular geographic feature. (2) The codebook is provided by ICPSR as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.