Administrative Division Data of Grand Casablanca: Creation of a District Repository Using QGIS

Abstract

In the context of a public mental health study conducted in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco, we encountered a serious challenge regarding the availability of consistent and accurate administrative division data. Hence, using the Google Maps API in QGIS, we proceeded to geocode the Grand Casablanca districts and overlay them on the updated Morocco’s administrative regions shapefile. The district data were summarized and gathered creating an administrative division repository from the district level up. Thus, the main contribution of the current paper, is a table containing (District, District_CP, Commune, Type_com, Prefecture/Province (PR), PR_CP, Region) and the second output is the shapefile that generated the table. The GIS data and the map are useful to other researchers in Morocco and elsewhere who have had no opportunity to access administrative division data of the location. As for foreign researchers from other developing countries the paper’s approach can be applied in their studies to create other lacking geographic repositories.