Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística

About the publication - 2021

The files of this dissemination represent the Municipal Digital Mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division, according to the current political-administrative structure.

In 2021, the Digital Municipal Mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division comprises 5,572 geocodes, namely

• 5568 Municipalities;
• 1 Federal District (Brasília – DF);
• 1 State District (Fernando de Noronha – PE);
• 2 Operational State Areas (Lagoa dos Patos and Lagoa Mirim, both of them attributed to Rio Grande do Sul).

The products described here present the following territorial units: Municipalities, Micro-regions, Mesoregions, Areas of Immediate Geographic Regions, Intermediate Geographic Regions and Federation Units, separated into file directories by FU or in unified files for Brazil in the respective territorial units, with the BR prefix.

It should be highlighted that the attributes of the Brazilian Divisions in "Immediate Geographic Regions and Intermediate Geographic Regions", published in 2017 based on the above mentioned Digital Municipal Mesh have progressively replaced up to December 21, 2023 the "Geographic Mesoregions and Microregions" published in 1989 by the IBGE. The "Immediate Geographic Regions" should replace the "Geographic Microregions" and the "Intermediate Geographic Regions" should replace the "Geographic Mesoregions". Please access the following link to get more details on this subject: https://www.ibge.gov.br/geociencias/organizacao-do-territorio/divisao-regional/15778-divisoes-regionais-do-brasil.html?=&t=acesso-ao-produto 

To access and work with the material, you will need a software that can read Shapefile (for example: Qgis or ArcGis, among  other free or licensed ones).

The nomenclature pattern of the files is showed below:

Where XX corresponds to the FU initials.

Each file has attributes according to what is described below:

Files: XX_Municipios_2021.shp e BR_Municipios_2021.shp

Files: XX_Microregions_2021.shp e BR_Microegions_2021.shp

Files: XX_Mesorregioes_2021.shp e BR_Mesorregioes_2021.shp

Files: XX_RG_Imediatas_2021.shp e BR_RG_Imediatas_2021.shp

Files: XX_RG_Intermediarias_2021.shp e BR_RG_Intermediarias_2021.shp

Files: XX_UF_2021.shp e BR_UF_2021.shp

• The cartographic bases made available comply with the original working scale (1:250,000), with no point suppression, according to the technical criteria pre-established by the IBGE/DGC/CETE.
• Geodetic Reference System - SIRGAS 2000
• System of Geographic Coordinates
• Text encoding - UTF-8

Evolution of the Municipal Meshes

The Political-Administrative Division - DPA of Brazil is one of the most dynamic in Western countries, since the establishment of its bases by Decree-Law No. 311 of March 2, 1938.

The Municipal Mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division is a product prepared by the Coordination of Territorial Structures - CETE of the Directorate of Geosciences - DGC, which resulted from the project “Municipal Graphic File - AGM”, whose purpose was to transcribe the laws of creation or alteration of the DPA on the topographic mapping sheets produced in the 1970s and 1980s, on the best available scale, all over the Brazilian territory.

Legal Considerations

The IBGE´s digital municipal mesh has the following basic function: "Represent the Brazilian political-administrative division as faithful as possible, providing the IBGE with the administrative borders needed to accomplish its institutional mission".

Although the IBGE´s municipal mesh is currently used as a reference for several activities and by several public and private offices and by the society in general, the IBGE has not any legal attribution to define and outline territorial borders.

The borders here represented are just interpretations of the legislation, thus they should not be considered as official outlines or characterizations. In other words, it cannot be considered, at no time, a an official mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division.

Considerations on the Updating

The Municipal Reference Mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division is published on an annual basis, containing the political and administrative representation of the states and municipalities used by IBGE for the purpose of producing statistical data.

The population estimates annually produced by the IBGE take into account the updated status of the Political-Administrative Division, whose dynamics reflects the territorial changes occurred in the municipality borders, in the scope of the technical cooperation agreements that the IBGE maintain with State Offices in charge of this matter and/or Legislative Assemblies. The changes received by the IBGE after April 30 of the current year are incorporated into the Municipal Mesh in the following year, considering the minimum time needed to process this information into the Territorial Base and other IBGE registers.

The product portrays the current status of the Political-Administrative Division, through the vectorial representation of the defining lines of the state boundaries and municipal limits, being always made prioritizing the descriptions, references, delineations and legal outlines, with the use of new inputs and latest and available geotechnologies in the Institution.

Consideration on the Limitation of the Use of the Mesh

The Municipal Mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division expresses the effort of the IBGE in geometrically representing the Political-Administrative Division in a scenario that comprises outdated legislation, legal omissions, proxies, disputes and lack of up-to-date cartographic inputs and in scale of detail.

In general, the current borders in the digital municipal mesh should be seen as approximate borders. The precision of the outline will depend on a number of factors, such as completeness of the legislation, type of feature, graphic quality and how updated is the cartography available or the resolution of the orbital or orthophoto images used. Cases that require attention in relation to the correct use of the mesh should be highlighted:

1) Borders based on hydrography using the terms: "thalweg", "course", "up" or "down" the river - Such situations bring problems to the materialization of the outline, due to the lack of knowledge of the exact places where the border passes over the hydrography.

2) Meandering rivers or areas with constant hydrographical changes - The cartographic updating and the definition of properties can be compromised due to natural and artificial changes in the river course, as well as to the scale of the municipal mesh;

3) Watershed in plain areas - The representation of the borderline complies with the best scale of the official document in the area, though it may not be suitable to define the details in the terrain;

4) Dry lines whose vertexes are not defined by landmarks or whose coordinates are unknown within the current parameters of precision - Laws that define borders by means of landforms or outstanding points of hard identification, not materialized by landmarks and not described by coordinates are also common.

5) Astronomical lines of any type (at least meeting the requirements of item 4) - Laws that define borders through the description of coordinates without a reference system.

6) Straight lines crossing urbanized areas - Laws that define borders outdated in relation to the occurrence of a number of territorial changes and urban expansion.

7) Borders - whose legislation or descriptive do not features identifiable in official cartographic products and whose precision does not comply with the demand under analysis.

8) Urbanized Areas - certain border stretches that cross urbanized areas with a high density of buildings can be adjusted in order to enable fieldwork operations.

9) The coastline - represented in this mesh is designed for the survey activities of the IBGE. As a result, it does not have any physical validity – it was not targeted in studies of tide lines, extension of typical recesses of our shore (bays, estuaries, lagoons, deltas), as well as in studies of fluvial or coastal erosion –, i.e., it should not be used for any economic purpose.

The Municipal Mesh of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division serves as a basis for the calculation of the Territorial Areas, also published by the IBGE.

Disclaimer:

As a direct and indirect consequence of the items above:

• The IBGE is not responsible for defining the possession of any island located in rivers, lagoons, bays, estuaries or ocean that whose political-administrative subordination is not established in the legislation, obeying to hierarchical criteria at federal and state level.
• The IBGE is not responsible for defining the possession or the political-administrative subordination of any urban/rural property, pipelines, plants, airports, antennas, petroleum/gas wells, mining areas, wind towers, toll stations, fiscal offices and any other building or commercial or industrial installation.

For all the cases mentioned above, any disagreement in relation to the municipal mesh provided by the IBGE should be directed to:

- The State Office in charge of the political-administrative division in the state.

- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Brazilian Commissions of Border Demarcation, for the cases involving the Brazil's  international border with neighboring countries.

As a result of the established scenario, the IBGE recognizes the use of the Municipal Mesh as a reference of the Brazilian Political-Administrative Division for statistical purposes, highlighting , however, the limitations informed in this document and in other documents here indicated. Users assume any liability on the use of this mesh for purposes other than the compilation of statistical data, being the IBGE exempt of any liability.