GIS Resources

International Open Data

 Unites States of America

• The National Map from the USGS and partners
  • includes orthoimagery, elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover
• US Energy Information Agency (EIA)
  • maps and GIS files for various energy sources, includes major Canadian oil and gas pipelines
• NHGIS National Historical Geographic Information System provides population, housing, agricultural, and economic data and GIS boundary files, for geographic units in the United States, from 1790 to the present
• Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
  • presents complete data about the creation and changes in the size, shape, and location of every county in the fifty US states and the District of Columbia
• National Park Service unit boundaries
• NOAA GeoPlatform
  • Geospatial data, maps and analytics supporting NOAA's mission

North America

• North American Environmental Atlas Commission for Environmental Cooperation

UK

• UK Open Data
• MAGIC interactive map providing geographic information about the natural environment, some data is downloadable
• Ordnance Survey UK Open Data

EU

• European Union Open Data Portal  open data from the EU
• Eurostat: Geographical Information and Maps European administrative boundaries

All countries

• DIVA-GIS country level data
  • administrative boundaries, roads, railroads, altitude, land cover, population density
• FAO GeoNetwork
  • provides satellite imagery and spatial data to support sustainable development in agriculture, fisheries and food security
• Natural Earth 
  • integrated vector and raster data, available at 1:10, 1:50, and 1:110 m scales
• IPUMS Terra
  • integrates population and environmental data across disciplinary scientific domains, enabling research into dramatic transformations of human populations, the environment, and their interactions
• The Nature Conservancy GIS data
  • terrestrial and water ecoregion datasets, as well as TNC holdings and projects
• GADM
  • Global Administrative Areas: spatial database of the location of the world's administrative areas
• re3data.org
  • global registry of research data repositories, covers data repositories from various academic disciplines
• Open Data Portals around the World
• Free GIS Data list of links to over 300 sites providing freely available geographic datasets
• Mapzen data files from Open Street Map and other sources
• ArcGIS Hub Open Data
• CShapes
  • provides historical maps of state boundaries and capitals in the post-World War II period, shapefile format and R package
• SEDAC Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center
  • data center in NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System, hosted by CIESIN
  • retrieve global socioeconomic data from 15 different themes
• United Nations Environment Program Data Explorer
• United Nations Geoportal
• World Bank Data Catalogue
  • Provides access to over 3000 datasets, including geospatial data.
• World Resources Institute
  • Provides access to international datasets at the intersection of environment and development: climate, energy, food, forests, water, cities and the ocean
• WorldPop - Global spatial demographic data
• Protomap - A free and open map of the world, deployable as a single static file on cloud storage
• GHSL - Global Human Settlement Layer
  • Open and free data and tools for assessing the human presence on the planet