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I've been searching for a few days for the most accurate world coastline datasets.. Does anyone know where l can get coastlines at scales of 1:250 000, 1:2 000 000 and 1: 70 000. I've tried using the NOAA NGDC extractor but my 1:70 000 medium resolution coastlines only cover the US and the rest of the world is omitted.

I already have 1: 1 000 000(VMap0). Please point me in the right direction of where l can easily download good quality large-scale global coastline datasets.

Any help will be greatly appreciated

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'Large Scale' is sub 1:15,000 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map#Scale_and_accuracy –  Mapperz Mar 14 '11 at 17:54
@Mapperz Please, let's not criticize the OP for a perfectly valid and well-defined characterization of his/her needs. Surely there is room for qualitative characterizations of scale to depend on context and purpose. Wikipedia appears to acknowledge this by offering its scale pronouncements only hypothetically ("say,"). –  whuber Mar 14 '11 at 18:22
Perhaps specify which region you are interested in. –  johanvdw Mar 14 '11 at 19:29
@johanvdw I'm interested in the whole world, not a single region. –  pettychiwi Mar 15 '11 at 17:24
I'd be happy be to proven wrong, but I think the answer is: there aren't any (integrated) global coastline datas less than <1:500,000 nominal scale, or even <1:750k, even for a price. Of course I'm curious as to what use a global 70k dataset would be. –  matt wilkie Mar 17 '11 at 20:33

3 Answers 3

http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ has coastlines 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million which should get you started. To get larger scale you are probably going to have to start searching national/regional data stores.

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Thanx lant, I've already downloaded from natural-earth but noticed that the coastlines are not as accurate as l want. My intention is to have them at different scales and since l already have the 10mil, l now need 2mil, 250thousand and 70thousand datasets. –  pettychiwi Mar 14 '11 at 18:03

Tried Open Street Map?


Data: http://hypercube.telascience.org/~kleptog/

enter image description here

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA.

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I'm using OSM datasets for my project but l want to get external data for the coastlines. The OSM data l downloaded had coastlines but my roads go over the coast –  pettychiwi Mar 14 '11 at 18:20
May be you could edit the coastlines to fix that problem - improving the data for every one. –  iant Mar 14 '11 at 22:23
@iant,that could work but I'm running out of time so l need a fast solution. But will certainly have a look at them another time so that its easier for other people who might need coastlines –  pettychiwi Mar 15 '11 at 17:23

With creative cartographic techniques or more advanced geometric operations, the Global Administrative dataset (GADM) might be of use. Of course, level 0 (countries) would be easiest.

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