Belgiumshapes

Belgiumshapes is a public geospatial project that gathers, standardizes, and distributes vector boundary data for Belgium. The project focuses on administrative geographies such as regions, provinces, and municipalities, and may include subdivisions used in statistical and planning contexts. The aim is to provide consistent, ready-to-use boundary shapes across common GIS formats for mapping, analysis, and education. Data are typically served in formats such as shapefiles and GeoJSON and are accompanied by metadata describing the source, accuracy, and coordinate reference systems. The project emphasizes topological integrity and harmonization across boundary layers to facilitate join operations and cross-border comparisons.

Belgiumshapes sources its data from official Belgian geographic authorities and reputable open data publishers, then processes and packages it to a common schema. The repository and website usually offer versioned releases, change logs, and documentation to help users understand how the shapes were derived and updated. Access is generally open to the public, and licensing is chosen to support reuse in research, mapping, and software development, often with an open license in line with open data practices.

Users of Belgiumshapes include researchers, cartographers, urban planners, and developers who build maps or perform spatial analyses. The project is community-oriented, with contributions through issue trackers, pull requests, or data contribution guidelines. By providing interoperable boundary datasets, Belgiumshapes supports accurate visualization and comparative studies of Belgium’s geographic subdivisions.