METADATA FILE I. General description of data set ----------------------------------- Name Administrative Units for Baltic Sea drainage basin region Geographic Level Regional Specific Area Baltic Sea drainage basin region Lat/Long Region Boundaries NW-X: 0-E , SW-X: 0-E NW-Y: 75-N , SW-Y: 45-N SE-X: 40-E , NE-X: 40-E SE-Y: 45-N , NE-Y: 75-N Infoterra Keyword(s) Human settlements (16000) Human population (14213) Other Keyword(s) Municipality, county, country, towns, administrative units Primary Data Acquisition Period Start Date: 1989 End Date: 1993 Supplier GRID-Arendal. PO Box 1602, Myrene. N-4801 Arendal, Norway. Contributor GRID-Arendal. PO Box 1602, Myrene. N-4801 Arendal, Norway. Publication Reference Langaas, S. 1993. Some Georeferenced Data Sets for use within Sub-project 1; Land Use and Ecological Carrying Capacity, of the Baltic Drainage Basin Project. Technical Note. GRID-Arendal. 10 pages + apps. Sweitzer, J., Langaas, S., and Folke, C. 1996. Land Use and Population Density in the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin: A GIS database. AMBIO 25(3):191-198. Documentation (overview) The Administrative Units layer is a data set of county-level administrative regions, and in some cases, municipality administrative regions for all countries positioned fully or partially within the Baltic Sea drainage basin. The data was compiled from several sources: the Nordic Cartographic Database (1:2,000,000 scale vector database), EUROSTAT GISCO (1:3,000,000 scale vector database), GRID-Warsaw (unknown scale), the Estonian Environment Information Centre (1:200,000 scale vector database), the Latvian Environmental Data Centre (IDRISI image with 0.0185 degree cell size), digitised Lithuanian boundaries (1:600,000 paper map), Czech and Slovak Republics obtained via INTERNET (SimTel). The international boundaries in the PONET layer of the Digital Chart of the World (DCW) by ESRI was used for consistent spatial positioning when joining all data sets. For some of the countries obtained from the Nordic Cartographic Database (i.e., Finland, Norway, and Sweden), the international boundaries off-shore were provided instead of the actual coastline for each of the countries. If users are interested in obtaining administrative unit information for only land area then the Land and Ocean (Coastline) coverage can be used as a clip cover to get the desired output. All data sets were prepared individually using PC ARC/INFO. The one IDRISI image was converted into ARC/INFO polygon format. Each data set was corrected for label errors, dangling arcs, and unique internal user ID's. An item called UNIT_ID was added to the coverage .PAT file. Each administrative unit in the data set has a unique UNIT_ID value. For each country in the data set, its UNIT_ID begins with a unique thousands value (e.g. Belarus is 1000 - 1999, Norway is 25000 - 26999). Some countries span multiple 1000 positions. The individual data sets, when completed, were appended, built for topology, and edited once again for label errors, dangling arcs, sliver polygons, and unique internal user ID's. Due to copy right rules associated with some of the source data sets, we were unable to redistribute the compiled vector Administrative Units data set as it was first generated. Therefore, we converted the polygon coverage into an IDRISI image with a 500 meter cell size. The IDRISI image was vectorised back into an ARC/INFO polygon coverage. This resulted in 'new' boundary lines with a saw-toothed pattern reflecting the raster cells. In addition to the added item UNIT_ID, eight other attributes were appended to the cover .PAT file. UNIT_ID served as the bridge item to join the other attributes originating from an EXCEL spreadsheet. The final ADMIN500 coverage has a total of 13 attributes, including the four automatically generated by ARC/INFO. Because an IDRISI image file only displays one data attribute at any one time, a comma delimited ASCII file was generated so IDRISI users could generate an image based on any of the ARC/INFO polygon coverage attributes. IDRISI users can accomplish this by generating value files from the comma delimited ASCII file. There are a total of 13 attributes in the file called ADMIN500.CSV. Similar copy right issues were encountered with population statistics for some administrative regions. In order to provide these data to the users we had to round the true values to the hundreds position (i.e., 500, 1100, 14900, etc.). ***** Attention IDRISI users ***** The final IDRISI image was 40,000 KB in size. This was due to the 500 meter resolution and also because the image was stored in integer/binary format (values as high as 32000). Because of its size we decided to provide only the IDRISI Administrative Units line file. This file can easily be converted into an image of any desired resolution using the INITIAL command to generate a template image and the POLYRAS command to update the template image with the IDRISI area line file information. ************************************************************************ Contact information Hugo Ahlenius phone: +47-370-35650 UNEP/GRID-Arendal fax: +47-370-35050 e-mail: mapmaster@grida.no II. Detailed description of data set (members) ----------------------------------------------- Data set type ARC/INFO vector Description ADMIN500 - Administrative Units File Size ARC/INFO export file: 17,045 KB Access Free access, unrestricted Copies (available sites) CD-ROM - being distributed by GRID-Arendal World Wide Web (WWW), GRID-Arendal URL - http://www.grida.no/ III. Technical information about vector data --------------------------------------------- Source Data set IDRISI 500 meter Administrative Units image Scale/Resolution Smallest polygon unit is 500 meters by 500 meters square Feature Type Polygon Number of Polygons 2338 Projection Name Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area Projection Parameters Units: meters Spheroid: International 1909 Radius: 6,378,388 Longitude of centre of projection: 20.00.00 Latitude of centre of projection: 60.00.00 False Easting: 0 False Northing: 0 Projection boundaries Xmin: -1,000,000 Ymin: -1,300,000 Xmax: 1,000,000 Ymax: 1,300,000 Attributes Brief description Area,13,13,n,6 Area of polygon Perimeter,13,13,n,6 Perimeter of polygon Admin500_,11,11,n,0 Internal coverage record value Admin500_id,11,11,n,0 Internal coverage polygon ID Unit_id,6,6,n,0 Unique administrative unit code value Country,25,25,c,0 Country which polygon belongs to Istlv_unit,25,25,c,0 First level (county) unit Seclv_unit,25,25,c,0 Second level (municipality) unit Unit_type,25,25,c,0 Aministrative unit type Total_pop,12,12,n,0 Total population within unit Urban_pop,12,12,n,0 Urban population within unit Rural_pop,12,12,n,0 Rural population within unit Date,6,6,n,0 Population source date