Get started¶
Using this project is three steps.
- Find your dataset in the Catalog. Each page lists the administrative levels available for that country, how many features each has, and its bounding box.
- Copy a URL. Every dataset page gives a CDN URL, a raw GitHub URL and a
curlcommand. Download & CDN explains which to use when — the answer is not always the CDN. - Load it. Quick start has working snippets for Leaflet, MapLibre, Python and QGIS.
Before you start: file sizes¶
Administrative boundary data is large, and this project stores it uncompressed so it stays diff-able and directly consumable. Concretely, Chile's communes file is 70 MB.
That has consequences worth knowing up front:
- Do not load a full-resolution file into a browser. 70 MB over the network
becomes several hundred megabytes of JavaScript heap after
JSON.parse, plus tens of seconds of blocked main thread. On mobile it is a crashed tab, not a slow map. Use the simplified preview files, or simplify to your own tolerance — see Recipes. - Do not clone the whole repository just to get one country. Use a sparse checkout; Download & CDN shows how.
- The CDN has a 20 MB ceiling. Files above it must come from raw GitHub.
Which admin level do you want?¶
| You want | Level | In Chile |
|---|---|---|
| First-level divisions | ADM1 | 16 regiones |
| Second-level divisions | ADM2 | 56 provincias |
| The municipal tier | ADM3 | 345 comunas |
Level numbers are structural, not semantic: a country's ADM1 is whatever its first-level division happens to be called. See Administrative levels.