Data Sources
Full attribution for all data used on 3D World Atlas. We only use publicly available datasets from authoritative institutions. Each figure traces to a named source with a license.
Wikipedia article summaries are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. All other content on this site is our own curation.
Primary Sources
Open data portal maintained by the World Bank Group, providing freely accessible population statistics for every country.
- Country population figures on country pages and ranked country data
Comprehensive geographical database of over 11 million place names worldwide, including city populations and coordinates.
- City population figures and coordinates on city pages and the cities hub
US federal scientific agency providing authoritative data on natural features including elevation measurements and river lengths.
- Mountain elevations and coordinates
- River lengths on river pages and the rivers hub
Annual reference publication by the US Central Intelligence Agency covering geography, government, economy, and more for every country.
- Country area figures
- Desert areas on desert pages and the deserts hub
Wikipedia's aggregated list of languages by total and native speaker counts, sourced from Ethnologue, SIL, and government census data.
- Language speaker figures used in search and site statistics
International Lake Environment Committee's comprehensive database of the world's lakes.
- Lake areas and depths for Caspian Sea, Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal, Lake Malawi
US Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes monitoring and research program.
- Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan area and depth data
Federal department responsible for managing and reporting on Canada's natural resources.
- Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake area and depth data
Annual airport traffic statistics published by Airports Council International.
- Airport passenger figures on airport pages and the airports hub
Ocean and sea area figures drawn from NOAA and International Hydrographic Organization references.
- Ocean and sea areas on ocean pages and the oceans hub
CDN hosting SVG and PNG country flags derived from public-domain flag artwork.
- Country flags on country pages, the globe UI, and Open Graph images
Encyclopedia article summaries fetched server-side from Wikipedia's public API and cached for place pages.
- Article summaries shown on country pages, place pages, and ranked list hubs
Public domain map dataset at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales, including the Natural Earth II raster.
- Country boundary polygons for 3D globe click detection
- River centerlines on the globe
- Admin-1 region polygons
- Natural Earth II equirectangular texture on the 3D globe
City Population Data
City population figures and coordinates across the atlas are sourced from GeoNames, a comprehensive open geographical database licensed under CC BY 4.0. GeoNames aggregates data from national statistical offices, the UN, and other authoritative sources.
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