Borders and boundaries: 16 Google Fusion border files for you to use

January 28, 2013

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1–2 minutes

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England deprivation mapped with Google Fusion

I’ve been building up a collection of border files for us to use in Google Fusion table maps – and these are the key ones. You can download these as KML files or as CSVs. Or merge them with your data. If you have a shp file you what to convert to Google Fusion tables try shpescape, which will do it for you.

And there’s a new site too which looks promising: Inquiron, which converts geofiles into a variety of formats.

Google’s Public Data explorer is a good place to find others too.

I would love this to become more comprehensive – do you have any borders you can share?

UK borders

World and United States

35 responses to “Borders and boundaries: 16 Google Fusion border files for you to use”

Noah Price

March 14, 2017 at 5:10 pm

Hi there. Do you know where I can find an accurate UK Postcode boundary fusion table? I found one, but when mapped against the LSOA boundaries, they don’t seem to correlate.

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Ken Pollard

September 16, 2016 at 9:19 am

This looks like just what I’ve been searching for, but I can’t seem to download the LSOA data as a KML file. Is this right?

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christyromer

July 20, 2016 at 9:06 am

Hi Simon,

Appreciate this comment is maybe three years too late (just proves the continuing relevance of your work!), but I’m looking to map Local Authorities in the UK and the link above says not to use your data. Any idea where to look for the most recent data + KML boundaires?
Many thanks!

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  July 28, 2016 at 1:00 pm
  
  Actually, I think it is still current. Does it not look like it?
  
  Reply
Adam Bowie

March 10, 2016 at 11:12 am

Hi Simon,

A very useful collection of links. My only problem is that the Local Authorities set (#3 on your UK list above) seems to be locked down now. I can neither merge from it, since Fusion doesn’t allow me to choose a field to match with my table, and nor can I download the data to clean it up a bit and get around the merge problem that way.

All Google searches seem to return to your site! This data must exist somewhere. Any thoughts?

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  July 28, 2016 at 1:03 pm
  
  Yeah, I no longer have control over this table. Have you tried this site? https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/boundary-line.html
  
  Reply
John

January 17, 2016 at 2:10 pm

Is there a limit to the the size of file which GFT will publish. I find I can publish maps of local authorities from England and Wales with KML but if I add Scotland with all it’s little islands, I can create it, but publish doesn’t work

Reply
When to use shape maps in data visualisation: part 2 of a great big guide | Online Journalism Blog

August 28, 2015 at 6:11 am

[…] Here, for example, Simon Rogers lists 16 useful Fusion Tables files for mapping shapes. […]

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Faisal Wasswa

August 25, 2015 at 1:36 pm

Absolute Godsend!!!. You wouldn’t happen to have Output Areas as well would you. THANK YOU

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  September 19, 2015 at 5:57 am
  
  LSOAs? You can get those here: https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1k7zmR1vMWz1_JG-XsT2eXKtyE4wqFByFoJYsk8A
  
  Reply
Kate (@katesmithtrust)

August 13, 2015 at 4:10 pm

Hi Simon,

Is the LSOA dataset based on the one from the ONS data portal? Lower layer super output areas (E+W) 2011 Boundaries (Full, Clipped) V2?

Thanks for your help with these – really useful!

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Chris Woods

June 12, 2015 at 6:32 pm

Hi Simon. Great site. Do you know if the video course will be available again soon? Its currently closed. Thanks, Chris.

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  September 19, 2015 at 5:58 am
  
  Yes!
  
  Reply
mulanlaoshi

April 11, 2015 at 12:20 pm

Hi Simon, really enjoy following your work/videos. Trying to come up with a topic for my MSc in Health Informatics at City University, London. I’m getting to grips with google fusion tables, but just can’t settle on two health related datasets to merge….I’d like to find a meaningful topic. I’m a nurse in Interventional Radiology, but it’s such a new subfield of Radiology that there is little or no open data around. Any advice would be much appreciated…

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Dan Hewitt

May 2, 2014 at 1:52 pm

Hi Simon, I used your England LSOA data to map areas which qualify for funding assistance under ECO (I was looking especially at the rural element which is very scattered) and it has proven to be very helpful, I would like to do a similar thing with Scotland but I cannot seem to locate that data anywhere. Would you have any ideas where I may locate it? Thanks for the useful resource links, made my work a lot easier as I am a complete newbie to fusion tables, great tools though!

Reply
Let’s draw maps | graphitti

April 15, 2014 at 7:28 am

[…] to run the Guardian datablog and now works at twitter, draws lots of google fusion maps, and has a bunch of boundary files on his site, including some for UK local authorities. They’re free to download, so I took […]

Reply
Reference people in data visualization | Lucía D. Bóveda

March 16, 2014 at 9:23 pm

[…] first came across him when I was looking for the boundaries for the local authorities as he has this great blog post with a series of borders and boundaries for Google Fusion. Worth checking his blog in […]

Reply
Mapping with Google Fusion Tables | Lucía D. Bóveda

March 16, 2014 at 3:21 pm

[…] of the local authorities. To do that, I found very useful Simon Rogers’ post called Borders and boundaries: 16 Google Fusion border files for you to use as I was able to take them from there. So the only thing I had to do was to merge both […]

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meltwaterfalls

February 24, 2014 at 4:40 pm

Hi Simon. Thanks for these files they have been massively useful. One thing I can’t seem to find is the boundaries for UK Parliamentary constituencies, do you have any idea where may have them?

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  March 4, 2014 at 7:13 am
  
  Hi there – these are the 2013 boundaries.
  
  Reply
  1. Meltwaterfalls
    
    March 4, 2014 at 11:34 am
    
    Thanks Simon, looks like exactly what I need.
Ian

November 4, 2013 at 1:03 pm

This is great, trying to map recent fuel poverty stats. Thanks!!

Reply
6 useful Google Fusion border files | Duarte Romero Varela

October 1, 2013 at 10:51 pm

[…] So, whenever I find an useful table I save it in my Google Drive, building a modest repository of borders. I found some of them through the experimental table search-engine and the rest of them on Simon Roger’s blog. […]

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James Trimble

August 15, 2013 at 6:29 pm

ONS’s new Open Geography Portal is a very useful source of UK boundary files. I’ve just blogged about this at http://ukdataexplorer.blogspot.co.uk/.

Reply
How to draw your own Fusion table maps « ROB GRANT

February 17, 2013 at 10:12 pm

[…] Rogers (a City visiting lecturer) has a handy bank of KML files, but if you can’t find the perfect one that suits your needs the answer might be […]

Reply
storgatan

February 6, 2013 at 5:22 pm

Terrific work! This is the type of info that are supposed to be shared around the internet. Shame on the seek engines|Google} for no longer positioning this submit higher! Come on over and discuss with my website . Thank you =)

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Sandra Smith

February 1, 2013 at 7:44 pm

It’s actually the data here (http://www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/datasets/a00196810/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2) on Free School meals that I am trying to map (which I have seen on the Guardian already….). I tried using both the id codes and the names but it didn’t work. I went through the tutorial on your blog and that worked fine so not sure what I am doing wrong. Will keep trying!

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  February 1, 2013 at 11:22 pm
  
  Let me know how you get on
  
  Reply
Sandra Smith

February 1, 2013 at 2:35 pm

Hi. I’ve come to this via the comments page on the Guardian. I’m trying to map some DoE data:

http://www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/statistics/allstatistics/a00196810/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2

using Fusion tables. When I try to merge the Local Authorities UK data with my data it says, ” Unable to perform merge….”. I can get it to work with this table here

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1vhqibzb2utSzEPM_HncDwf-BXMSklbx5kxyL_Q

but the coverage is very patchy – maybe only 15 % of LAs are being picked up. Any suggestions or alternative tables?

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  February 1, 2013 at 6:03 pm
  
  Hi Sandra – are you merging it on the id codes or the names? The id codes are the ones to use
  
  Reply
Sharon Machlis

January 30, 2013 at 2:03 pm

FYI I tried to access your US counties file but got a permissions error.

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1. Simon Rogers
  
  January 31, 2013 at 1:08 am
  
  Hi – my bad. Just sorted the permissions and should be fine now.
  
  Reply
Simon Rogers

January 28, 2013 at 10:06 pm

Lovely work – thanks!

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Adele Gilpin

January 28, 2013 at 7:03 pm

Hi Simon, here’s a Fusion Table that I put together for Counties in England: https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=19DqHxxbkdgsEmXVooB7vRHRit8wVnVAEcP9W5lA

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Mila Frerichs (@mila_frerichs)

January 28, 2013 at 11:14 am

Great overview… and I’ve got one for you:

Germany: geometric data of constituencies http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/BTW_BUND_13/wahlkreiseinteilung/kartographische_darstellung.html

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