Thousands of shapefile maps can be downloaded for free from the
following websites, including country shapefiles, shapefiles at province
or state level, and other administrative boundaries maps. The shapefile
(or ESRI shapefile) format is a geospatial vector format and one of the
most common (if not the most common) map format.
Shapefile maps can be loaded into
StatPlanet Lite and
StatPlanet Plus to create interactive shapefile maps (see also:
setting up a shapefile map). Please note that you need to download the map files in the ".SHP" format to load them into StatPlanet.
-
Natural Earth - world maps
- Excellent world shapefile maps with national boundaries, first order
admin (provinces, states, etc.), disputed areas, coastlines, populated
areas and more at various scale levels.
-
United Nations -
UN-SALB (Second Administrative Level Boundaries) data set project.
These maps are free but copyright rests with the UN. The maps are
validated by the National Mapping Agencies (NMA) of each UN Member
State. This website requires registration to download the maps.
-
DIVA-GIS - Free country level maps, including administrative boundaries, roads, railroads, altitude and land cover.
-
Geocommons - A
huge database of user submitted maps. Search for any kind of map, then
click on the "shapefile" button to the right of the map (if available)
to download the shapefiles.
-
World Bank -
Country shapefiles can be downloaded through the World Bank's Mapping
platform as follows: Click on 'explore countries' to select a country,
click on 'download' in the top-right corner, and select 'Indicators
(shapefile)'. This option is not available for all countries.
-
Map Library - Country shapefile maps for Africa in the public domain.
-
MapCruzin - A great source for all kinds of shapefiles.
-
Open Street Map -
A growing collection of shapefile map downloads by continent, region
and country. These maps are community edited and are not always
complete. Shapefiles by country are also available from VDS tech.
-
US Census Bureau - USA County and District Cartographic Boundary Files.
See also:
Free country shapefile maps can be downloaded below, which have
already been integrated into StatPlanet. Maps indicated with an asterisk
(*) are Flash maps rather than shapefile maps. Please note that not all
country versions are using the latest version of
StatPlanet Plus. To update the country version to the latest version, please see the
update instructions.
1. Once you have downloaded StatPlanet Plus, find the folder 'Shapefile_map' and then go to the sub-folder 'map'.
2. Remove the included example map files, and copy your own shapefiles here.
3. Rename your files (e.g. xxx.shp and xxx.dbf) to map.shp and map.dbf. Only these files are required.
4. Open the StatPlanet_data_editor file. Click on the button 'Setup shapefile' (in the top-left).
5. Select the map.dbf file in the 'map' sub-folder, and follow the instructions.
6. Run StatPlanet.exe or StatPlanet.html to see the results with the included sample data.
You can now start importing your own data for the map.
The font and interface components can be customized through the Excel
sheet 'Settings', and the map dimensions can changed by
editing StatPlanet.html.
For further information, please see the
Quick Start Developer Guide.
ESRI Shapefile Reader - Source Code
The source code for reading the shapefiles is included in the directory SHPreader.
It can be compiled to the file SHPreader.swf, which is read by StatPlanet.
The code was written by Edwin van Rijkom under the LGPL license, with
some additions by Andy Woodruff, and some slight modifications for use
in StatPlanet.
If you wish to change the names of the map files being read, you can change this in SHPreader.as,
and publish it as SHPreader.swf through the file SHPreader.fla.
For more information, see:
http://shp.riaforge.org/
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