GIS data for the U.S.-Mexico border fence (perhaps a wall in the future)
Reveal's border fence shapefiles are open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the shapefiles, so long as you:
- Credit Reveal as specified below.
- Inform Reveal that you are using the shapefiles in your work by emailing Michael Corey at mcorey@revealnews.org.
If you alter or build upon our data, you may distribute the result only under the same licence. The full legal code explains your rights and responsibilities.
We require that you use the credit “Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and OpenStreetMap contributors”. The credit must link to https://www.revealnews.org/wall/, unless the credit is appearing in printed media.
You must also make it clear to anyone who requests access to the data that it is available under the Open Database License. If you are distributing the shapefiles in a data form, you can name and link directly to the license.
The first six fields are the primary fields of interest for most users. The remaining fields are to preserve references to OpenStreetMap data from our original fence map project. While the current fence data has not been imported into OpenStreetMap, we hope to do so in the future.
| Column name | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
| id | integer | Row ID |
| gen_type | string | General type of fence. Options are "pedestrian," "vehicle" and an empty string for unknown fence types. |
| project | string | Which government project was the segment built under. Options are "Legacy" (i.e. built before the Secure Fence Act), "PF225", "VF300", "PF70" and an empty string for unknown fence types. |
| seg_name | string | The U.S. government name for the segment. All non-legacy fencing segments should have designations. |
| created | date/time stamp | The date/time when the segment was created in Reveal's database. |
| updated | date/time stamp | The date/time when the segment was last updated in Reveal's database. |
| last_osm_d | date/time stamp | The date/time when the segment was last edited in OpenStreetMap, where applicable. |
| way_id | integer | OpenStreetMap way id when downloaded, where applicable. |
| barrier | string | OpenStreetMap barrier tag, where applicable. |
| taglist | string | OpenStreetMap tag list, where applicable. |
You can read more about our fence/wall mapping work on our website.