World Data Bank II (WDB-II) for Versamap

Version 1.10, released 20 November 1995

Enhancements to WDB-II
Geographic Features in WDB-II
Sample Maps Drawn with WDB-II
Files in WDB-II

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A digital world map developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The original database contains 6 million records at a nominal scale of 1:3,000,000. Successive points in the database are never more than 2 miles (3 km) apart.

Enhancements made to WDB-II for use with Versamap:

WDB-II was reformatted in a binary format that reduced the size of the database from 120 to 12 million bytes.
WDB-II was enhanced by the addition of political boundaries for the new countries formed from the Soviet Union and from Yugoslavia, for Slovakia and Eritrea, for Australian States, and for Scotland and Wales. These borders were not included in the original ASCII version of WDB-II.

WDB-II has 36 geographic features in the following 4 major categories:

International Boundaries or Limits of Sovereignty (8 features)
Coastlines, Islands, and Lakes (12 features)
Rivers (11 features)
Internal Political Boundaries (5 features)

Sample maps drawn using WDB-II:

The following maps were exported from Versamap 3 as Windows Bitmaps (BMP) and as Windows Metafiles (WMF). To reduce file size, each BMP image was converted to portable network graphics (PNG) format with Microsoft Paint. WMF images are vector graphics files and can be enlarged and reduced without loss of detail, whereas BMP and PNG images are bitmapped files and do not enlarge or reduce well.

To download the following maps in bitmapped PNG format, right click on the image, and choose Save Image As... or Save Picture As..., depending on your browser.
To download the following maps in Windows Metafile (WMF) format, right click on the links labeled (WMF, NNN KB), and choose Save Link As... or Save Target As..., depending on your browser (NNN is the size of the image).

The following map (WMF, 317 KB) of Korea and Japan was drawn on a Hammer equal-area projection. The map shows all geographic features present in the database.

Versamap cartography: Korea and Japan plotted from World Data Bank II

The following map (WMF, 173 KB) of Cape Hatteras was drawn on a Equirectangular projection. The map shows all geographic features present in the database.

Versamap cartography: Cape Hatteras plotted from World Data Bank II

List of WDB-II files:

WDB-II consists of the following 6 digital maps. The first 5 files (Africa.pkv through Oceania.pkv) cover individual regions. Wdb2_all.pkv, covers the entire world, and was formed by concatenating the 5 regional files.

Filename	Size (bytes)	Region
Africa.pkv	1,729,670	Africa
Eurasia.pkv	4,921,008	Europe and Asia
Lamerica.pkv	1,926,320	Latin America and Antarctica
Namerica.pkv	2,656,600	Canada and the United States
Oceania.pkv	1,078,610	Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands including Hawaii
Wdb2_all.pkv	12,312,208	Entire world

As an additional example of the detail available in the WDB-II data, the file UsaEast.pkv, which contains all data in the database for the east coast of the United States near Cape Hatteras, is included with the shareware version Versamap.

The following figure shows the area covered by each of the World Data Bank II regional .PKV files.

Versamap cartography: World Data Bank II regional coverage

Acknowledgments:

World Data Bank II for Versamap files, with file extension .PKV, are modified versions of the WDB-II binary, .PKD files developed and placed in the public domain by Fred Pospeschil.

Updated 14 November 2007