World Data Bank II: North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia

The boundaries of five different geographic areas -- North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia -- are digitally represented in this collection of data files that can be used in the production of computer maps. Each of the five areas is encoded in three distinct files: (1) coastline, islands, and lakes, (2) rivers, and (3) international boundaries. There is an additional file for North America (Part 4: North America: Internal Boundaries) delineating state lines in the United States and provincial boundaries in Canada. The data in each of the files is hierarchically structured into subordinate geographic features and ranks, which may be used for output plotting symbol definition. The mapping scale used to encode the data ranged from 1:1 million to 1:4 million.