Administrative boundaries of South Africa (free download)
[Demo]
This map contains the 2006 administrative boundaries as obtained from the Municipal Demarcation Board of South Africa (www.demarcation.org.za) as well as point locations for most towns and cities in South Africa.
Municipal boundaries and names have been very dynamic over the past years and are now finally settling down. Until recently, for instance, South Africa had cross-boundary district councils (crossing province boundaries), but these have now been divided to provide a hierarchy of Province -> District & metro municipalities -> Local municipalities.
Two layers of boundaries both cover the whole of South Africa: "District municipalities" and "Local municipalities". For Metropolitan municipalities the boundary is the same on both layers.
Most "District municipalities" (green borders) are divided up into "Local
municipalities (orange borders), but there are a few areas in South
Africa where the district municipality is the only authority. This
means that each polygon on the local municipality layer is classified
as one of the following:1. Metros (type "A") do not have smaller local municipalities and exist on both layers with identical boundaries.
2. Local municipalities (type "B") fall inside district municipalities.
3. "DMA"s - areas that do not fall under a local municipality and are under the authority of a district municipality only.
This is a good map for learning about the new names of municipalities throughout South Africa and also showcases some nice features of PlanetGIS like the locality map and scale-conditional styles. This is also a good example of how one can make a very usable and highly aesthetic map with PlanetGIS. Please visit the downloads section to obtain this map, or explore the map before downloading by viewing this Flash presentation.
Places
of South Africa (registered users) [Demo]This rather large map builds on the administrative boundaries map, adding the StatsSA main- and sub-place layers.
These layers are excellent for displaying
statistical information and the sub-place layer is
a good substitute
for suburbs because it groups extensions together. A thematic query of
population density on
both these layers provides a nice alternative for displaying built-up
areas.
In addition, nearly 60,000 locations from the SAGNS (South African Geographical Names System - http://sagns.dac.gov.za) have been added to this map, providing for some interesting exploration.
Also of note is the postal codes (PO Box and street codes) that have been matched with the sub-places polygons. This is not a perfect postal code dataset, but we have achieved a surprisingly good match between the names provided by sub-places and the postal code listing provided by the South African Post Office (http://www.sapo.co.za).
This match was futher enhanced by progressively
"fuzzier" matching
algorithms for sub-places
without codes.Please visit the downloads section to obtain this map, or explore the map before downloading by viewing this Flash presentation.
Note: this map requires the administrative boundaries map. If both maps are not placed in the same directory, Planet will prompt you for the location of SA-administrative.map.
(The image on the left is a thematic map displaying postal codes of sub-places with unique colours).
Main
Roads of South Africa (registered users) [Demo]
This
map builds on the Places of South Africa map by adding national,
regional and main roads. These roads are based on the latest main roads
from the CD:SM
and have been improved on somewhat in terms of classification and the
display of road names. This map is indispensable to anyone wanting to produce national or regional maps of South Africa.
Please visit the downloads section to obtain this map, or explore the map before downloading by viewing this Flash presentation.
Note: this map requires both the administrative boundaries and places map. If these maps are not placed in the same directory as the SA-roads.map, Planet will prompt you for the location of SA-administrative.map and SA-places.map.
Landsat
7 Satellite coverage of South Africa (order DVD) [Demo]
15m
Resolution images from NASA's Landsat 7 satellite in superfast
PlanetGIS .IJP format. At 4.3GB this map fits tightly on a single layer
DVD, but you won't find yourself waiting for PlanetGIS to draw the
images at any scale.This map is useful to add detail and colour to maps where aerial photography is not available. The resolution is good enough to discern unmapped roads, but is not really useful for viewing at scales of under 1:50,000.
Order this map here and we will promptly send you a DVD. Postage is included in the price. You can view a Flash demo of the Landsat 7 map here (8.6MB / 38 slides) or a shortened version here (3.3MB / 15 slides).
World Database II
(free download)
This map is based on the "PC World Data Base" product from ESRI (April 1990), having been significantly modified and enhanced at GRID-Geneva. Also included are major cities from the World Cities Population Database (WCPD). Each country has been linked to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) for rich and current information on every country.
[more...]