bemaps

Shapefiles for statistical sectors and municipalities in Belgium

The statistical sector is the basic territorial unit resulting from the subdivision of the territory of municipalities by Statbel since 1970 for the dissemination of its statistics at a finer level than the municipal level. A statistical sector cannot extend over two municipalities and any point in the municipal territory is part of one and the same statistical sector. Over time, the definition of statistical sectors has been updated, amongst others to take population growth and into account. There have also been changes to the definitions of municipalities, including a round of mergers that took place in 2019. To track these changes, the bemaps package provides shapefiles, specified using Simple Feature Access, for statistical sectors, municipalities, districs, provinces and regions in Belgium.

Available shapefiles

Shapefile	Reference period	Number of sectors	Number of municipalities	Number of districs	Number of provinces	Number of regions
BE\_ADMIN\_SECTORS	2021-2022	19478	581	43	11	3
BE\_ADMIN\_MUNTY	2021-2022	\-	581	43	11	3
BE\_ADMIN\_ARRD	2021-2022	\-	\-	43	11	3
BE\_ADMIN\_PROV	2021-2022	\-	\-	\-	11	3
BE\_ADMIN\_RGN	2021-2022	\-	\-	\-	\-	3
BE\_ADMIN\_BEL	2021-2022	\-	\-	\-	\-	\-

Install

To download and install the latest development version from GitHub:

devtools::install_github("sciensanogit/bemaps")

Data sources

The idea for this package is inspired by the BelgiumMaps.StatBel package, developed by Jan Wijffels at BNOSAC.

The shapefiles are obtained from the Statbel open data:

• sh_statbel_statistical_sectors_20210101 includes the statistical sectors of Belgium on 01/01/2021: https://statbel.fgov.be/en/open-data/statistical-sectors-2021

More information about statistical sectors is available in the Statbel Vademecum.

The link between postal code (ZIP) and NIS-code is obtained from the Flanders:

• NIS-codes via gemeente-20220303.zip includes the NIS-code and postal code by municipality, and can be used to link both.