India Specific Datasets
- Gateway
to Indian Earth Observation- Bhuvan Geoportal: A range of Earth
Observation-derived data for India including NDVI, ocean temperature and CartoDEM (a DEM for the whole of India at 30m
resolution).
- Meteorological &
Oceanographic Satellite Data Archival Centre- MOSDAC is
a data repository for the missions of the Indian Space Research
Organisation dealing with meteorology, oceanography and tropical water
cycles. Data acquired from missions is disseminated in near real timeis a data repository.
- Indian Biodiversity
Information System- ational Biodiversity
Characterization at Landscape Level, a project jointly sponsored by
Department of Biotechnology and Department of Space, was implemented to
identify and map the potential biodiversity rich areas in India
- Indian Bio-resource Information Network
IBIN: Provides datasets on Indian bio-resources from multiple data stakeholders
in the country.
- Visulization of
Earth observation Data and Archival System (VEDAS)-
provides access to thematic spatial derived data repository over
land and natural resource inventories generated using these data by SAC
(ISRO) or SAC in collaboration with other participating agencies. The
processed data for the Moon and the Mars are also available. The
description of the spatial data (metadata) including the view of the data
is provided.
Globally available Open Geo-spatial Datasets
General
- Natural Earth - Vector:
Includes coastline, land, oceans, islands, rivers, lakes, glaciated areas
and bathymetry. Available at multiple levels of detail. A version of this
data is also available in the Wagner VII projection, which has good equal
area properties, here.
- Natural Earth - Raster:
Includes various raster images, intended for use as backgrounds for other
data, for example hypsometric tints, satellite derived land cover, shaded
relief etc.
- Global Map: A set of consistent GIS
layers covering the whole globe at 1km resolution including:
transportation, elevation, drainage, vegetation, administrative
boundaries, land cover, land use and population centres. Produced by the
International Steering Committee on Global Mapping. Registration Required
- DIVA-GIS Country Data: A
collection of data collected from a number of the sources below - includes
administrative areas, inland water, roads and railways, elevation, land
cover, population and climate. Probably the easiest place to get a simple
set of data for a specific country.
- UNEP GEOdata:
A wide range of data from the United Nations Environment Programme
including Global Forest Cover, Global Potential Evapotranspiration, Global
Average Monthly Temperatures, Dams, Watershed Boundaries and much more. To
get data, choose Advanced Search and select Geospatial Data Sets from the
top drop-down link
- Koordinates:
GIS data aggregation site including data in a number of categories such as
elevation, environment, climate etc. Some global datasets, some based on
continents, some for specific countries. Mostly vector, but some raster.
Registration required
- MapCruzin:
GIS aggregation site including wide range of data for various areas of the
world. Some datasets appears to be of low quality, but others are good.
- GeoNetwork:
GIS aggregation site including a wide range of data under various
categories (both human and physical).
- European
Environment Agency: Maps and datasets from the European Environment
Agency, covering a huge range of physical geography and environmental
topics. Europe only.
Land and Ocean Boundaries
- GSHHS: A
Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline Database -
which basically means it's good quality (no
internal inconsistencies, good accuracy).
Elevation
- GDEM: 30m resolution
global elevation data derived from ASTER satellite images
- SRTM: Approx
90m (3 arc-second) resolution elevation data from the Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission for the whole world.
- EarthEnv-DEM90: 90m-resolution
near-global DEM created by merging the GDEM and SRTM products and post-processing
to fill voids and smooth data.
- ETOPO1: 1
arc-minute resolution relief model including ocean bathymetry.
- Global Multi-Resolution
Topography: Gridded elevation at approximately 100m resolution,
covering terrestrial and sea-floor topography.
- OpenTopography:
A community-based site giving free access to high-resolution topography
data. Data at the moment appears to be clustered on the West Coast of the
USA and in Greenland, and is available both as dense point clouds and
processed DEMs.
Weather and Climate
- WorldClim:
Climate data for past, present and predicted future conditions. Includes
temperature (min, max, mean) and precipitation. 1km x 1km resolution.
- NCAR GIS Climate Change Scenarios:
Lots of data from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research models,
including data used by the IPCC in their reports. Registration required
- CRU Climate Datasets:
Various datasets including temperature, precipitation, pressure, drought,
paleoclimate and others, from the (infamous) Climate Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia. High and low resolution datasets available.
- Downscaled GCM Portal: A
wide range of downscaled (that is, higher resolution data) created from
the outputs of a wide range of GCMs. Covers the majority of important
climate variables.
- Global Potential Evapotranspiration
and Aridity Index: Potential Evapotranspiration data and indices of
aridity at 30 arc-second resolution in raster format.
- GlobAerosol: Aerosol data in raster format
(provided as NetCDF files), including
estimations of AOD at 550nm and the Angstrom coefficient.
- Global Aerosol Climatology
Project: Monthly averages of Aerosol Optical Thickness and the
Angstrom exponent from 1981 to 2006.
- Satellite
Application Facility on Climate Monitoring: Provides near real-time
and retroactively-generated datasets of cloud cover, type and temperature,
surface radiation budget and temperatures, amongst others.
- Climate Analysis Indicators Tool: Carbon
Dioxide emissions data by country, and by US state, including measures of
adaption.
- International Satellite
Cloud Climatology Project: Monthly averages of a number of cloud
variables including cloud cover (and associated breakdown by frequency),
cloud top temperature, cloud water path, cloud optical thickness etc.
- Climatological
Database for the world's oceans (CLIWOC): Data compiled from ships
logs compiled during voyages between 1750 and 1850. Includes various
meteorological observations, broken down by date, ship and year.
- IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library:
A wide range of over 300 datasets from various climate models and
datasets.
- World Ozone and Ultraviolet
Radiation Data Center: Extensive set of data
collected from many stations across the world, recording ozone information
(from ozonesonde ascents) and ground-level
ultraviolet irradiance.
Hydrology
- HydroSHEDS:
Hydrological data and maps based on the STRM elevation data. Includes
river networks, watershed boundaries, drainage directions and flow
accumulations for the globe.
- Major
Watersheds of the World Deliniation: Vector
data showing the outlines of major watersheds (river basins) across the
world.
- Water
Isotopes: Global grids of hydrogen and oxygen isotope composition of
precipitation and environmental waters in ArcGRID
format. Data can be downloaded for whole globe or individual continents.
- General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans:
A range of gridded bathymetric datasets compiled by a group of experts.
- EarthEnv
Freshwater Ecosystems Environmental Information: 1km-resolution
environmental information for freshwater ecosystems, covering almost the
whole globe. Information includes climate, land-cover, soil and geology.
Snow/Ice
- Randolph Glacier Inventory: A global
inventory of glacier outlines, including some multi-temporal data. Major
focus on quality control.
- NSIDC Frozen Ground maps: Maps of
various types of frozen ground (permafrost) in the Arctic and various
other areas. Data can be downloaded by clicking on the map name then
selecting 'Access Data'
Natural Disasters
- Natural
Disaster Hazards: Hazard Frequency, Mortality and Economic Loss Risk
as gridded data for the globe. Covers cyclones, drought, earthquakes,
flood, landslide, volcano and a combination of them all ('multihazard').
- USGS
Earthquakes Database: KML files of all earthquakes recorded by the
USGS (across the whole world) from 1973 to present. Available as one
dataset or grouped by magnitude or year.
- Global Seismic Hazard Map:
Gridded data showing hazard risk of seismic activity across the globe.
- NOAA/WDC Historical
Tsunami Database: Location information of tsunami sources and run-up
events, including many attributes (eg. maximum
water height, travel time). Available in TSV format which can be imported
into GIS systems.
- MODIS Fire Detection
Data: Frequently updated data (including last 7 days of fires) in 1km
grid format, derived from thermal anomalies from MODIS data.
- Lightning and Atmospheric
Electricity Dataset: Wide range of data on lightning activity,
including average flashes per grid cell per year.
- NOAA Historical Hurricane
Tracks: Hurricane tracks for all North/Central American hurricanes. Data
can be exported by clicking the Download button on the top right.
- Natural
Disaster Hotspots: A wide range of geographic data on natural
disasters (including volcanoes, earthquakes, landslide, flood and 'multihazards') with hazard frequency, economic loss
etc.
Land Cover
- USGS Land Cover
Institute: Great set of links to almost all land cover datasets. Links
here include most of the datasets below, and many more esoteric data such
as river observations, aquifers data and ocean colour information.
- GLOBCOVER: Global
land cover dataset at 300m resolution from the MERIS sensor on the ENVISAT
satellite.
- Climate Change
Initiative Land Cover map: Global land cover dataset at 300m
resolution, for 1998-2002, 2003-2007, 2008-2012.
In many ways the 'successor' to GLOBCOVER.
- MODIS
Global Land Cover: 1km and 4km resolution global land cover maps
derived from MODIS images.
- UMD GLC: 1km resolution
global land cover maps from the University of Maryland created using a
classification tree approach from MODIS data
- EarthEnv
Global Consensus Land Cover: 1km-resolution global land cover,
produced by integrating many other land cover datasets, and providing
information on the consensus (or lack of consensus) between them
- Global Land Cover by
National Mapping Organisations: 1km data of land cover for the globe,
with a classification scheme based on the UN FAO LCCS, facilitating easy
comparison with other land cover products.
- GLC-SHARE:
Global Land Cover data combined from 'best available' national land cover
maps. 1km resolution.
- Global
Lakes and Wetlands Database: Global vector datasets showing areas of
lakes, reservoirs, wetlands, swamps, bogs etc.
- Vegetation Map at Last
Glacial Maximum: Broad-scale map of the world showing vegetation cover
at the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 - 15,000 BP)
- Grassland
GIS: Grassland extent data, along with grassland usage (eg. livestock intensity per area of grassland)
- Forest
GIS: Percentage tree-cover, population density and tree cover, share
of wood in fuel consumption etc.
- PALSAR
Forest/Non-Forest map: A very detailed (50m resolution) forest map for
the whole globe, created from SAR data.
- Global
Forest Change 2000-2014: Loss and gain in tree cover between 2000 and
2014, globally, at 30m resolution.
Ecology
- Atlas of
the Biosphere: Raster maps of environmental variables including soil
pH, potential evapotranspiration, average snow depth and many more.
- Lifemapper:
Species distribution maps - both recorded and predicted (based on climate,
terrain and land cover). Covers a huge number of species. *Data is
available by clicking on Species Archive, searching for a species and then
clicking on the number of points and choosing the SHP link at the top.
Alternatively, web services are available.
- WWF
World Ecoregions: Shapefile of ecoregions as defined by the WWF
Conservation Science Program.
- Anthropogenic
Biomes: Ecosystem unit maps derived from human interactions with
ecosystems creating 'anthropogenic biomes'. Gridded data at 5 arc-seconds
available.
- Amphibian Species
Distribution Grids: Approximately 1km resolution gridded data showing
species distribution. One file per species.
- Net Primary
Productivity: Gridded Net Primary Productivity data across the globe,
including a novel measure of 'Human Appropriation of NPP' measuring how
much of the NPP of an area humans are using.
- World Soil Information: Gridded datasets
covering the world's soils at a maximum resolution of 5 arc-minutes with
22 attributes for each cell including organic carbon content, gypsum
content, water capacity etc. Data is given for topsoil and subsoil. More
detailed datasets for individual countries and continents are available.
- Harmonized
World Soil Database: Combining regional and national soil databases
and maps from many countries under the Land Use Change programme of the UN
FAO. Includes soil units and parameters (such as pH, depth, and texture)
and is at a resolution of 30 arc-seconds.
- ERS/MetOp Soil Moisture: 25-50km resolution soil
moisture data from satellite scatterometer
measurements.
- Global
High Resolution Soil Water Balance: Raster data containing actual
evapotranspiration and soil water deficit with a resolution of 30 arcseconds (approx 1km).
- Global Carbon
Storage in Soils: Gridded carbon storage in soils for the world, from
the World Resources Institute.
- ReefBase
GIS: GIS data about coral reefs worldwide, including extensive
attribute data.
- Human Impacts to Marine
Ecosystems: Data from the National Center
for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis on human impacts to marine
ecosystems. Includes fishing impacts, ocean acidification, sea surface
temperature, pollutants and more.
- Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center: All data products from this center are available for download, including
atmospheric CO2 concentrations (including the famous Mauna Loa dataset),
precipitation data, long-term modelling data and more.
- UNEP WCMC: Variety
of datasets from the United Nations Environment Programme including global
wetlands, global distribution of coral reefs, mangrove distributions and
more.
- Aquamaps:
Standardised distribution maps for over 11,000 species of fish, marine
mammals and invertebrates. *Data available for download under High
Resolution Maps and Environmental Data links.
- Terrestrial Ecoregions of the
World: Vector data showing a biogeographic classification of
terrestrial ecological regions across the world.
- Freshwater Ecoregions of the
World: Vector data showing a biogeographic classification of
freshwater ecological regions across the world.
- Marine Ecoregions of the World:
Vector data showing a biogeographic classification of marine ecological
regions across the world.
- BioFRESH: Contemporary distributions of freshwater
species, mapped in vector format across the world
- Global Habitat Heterogeneity: A
set of 14 metrics on the spatial heterogeneity of global habitat, at 1km,
5km and 25km resolutions, derived from MODIS EVI data.
Mineral Resources/Oil and Gas
Human Geography
General
- UNEP GEOdata:
A wide range of data from the United Nations Environment Programme
including Nighttime Lights, Pollutant Emissions,
Commercial Shipping Activity, Protected Areas and Administrative
Boundaries. To get data, choose Advanced Search and select Geospatial
Data Sets from the top drop-down link
- World
Bank Geodata: A wide range of World Bank
datasets converted to KML format, includes GNP, schooling and financial
data.
- Humanitarian
Response Common and Fundamental Operational Datasets Registry: List of
freely available datasets for many countries run by the UN Humanitarian
Response programme. Contains administrative boundaries, transport,
population and more. Fairly empty at the moment but due to be updated
soon
- Atlas of the Biosphere:
Gridded human data including per capita oil usage, literacy rate,
population growth rate, built-up land and many more.
- Koordinates:
GIS data aggregation site including data in a number of categories such as
administrative boundaries, transportation etc. Some global datasets, some
based on continents, some for specific countries. Mostly vector, but some
raster. Registration required
- GISTPortal:
Wide range of GIS data from a project funded by UNAID to provide spatial
data for humanitarian purposes. Registration Required
- ESPON Grid Data:
Various human geography indicators in gridded raster form across Europe,
including GDP, population and unemployment in 2003 and 2006.
- MapCruzin:
GIS aggregation site including wide range of data for various areas of the
world. Some data appears to be of low quality, but others are good.
- GeoNetwork:
GIS aggregation site including a wide range of data under various
categories (both human and physical).
- Google Maps Gallery: A wide
range of user-submitted geographic data, available as a KML file
- History
Database of the Global Environment: Gridded time-series of population,
land-use for the last 12,000 years. Also includes GDP, agriculatural
areas, yields and greenhous gas emissions for
the last century.
Administrative Boundaries
- Natural Earth: Includes
countries, disputed areas, first-order admin (departments, states etc), populated places, urban polygons, parks and
protected areas and water boundaries. Available at multiple levels of
detail.
- GADM:
Global administrative boundaries, with extensive attribute sets. Covers
countries and up to four levels of internal administrative boundary
(states, departments, counties etc). (For Land
Cover see above)
- World
Borders: World country borders with attributes including country codes
(FIPS, ISO etc), area and populations.
- Europe in the World:
Administrative boundaries for Europe with lots of attribute data for each
country/region including information on economy, demography and
infrastructure.
- CShapes
- Historical Boundaries: Historical state boundaries and capitals
post-WW2, world-wide, including all changes and dates of changes.
- VLIZ Maritime Boundaries:
Maritime boundaries and areas of Exclusive Economic Zones, including
detailed attribute data on treaties etc. From the Flanders Marine
Institute.
- TZ timezones:
A map of timezone areas in the world as used in
the Unix TZ database format, from which we get the naming Europe/London,
America/New_York etc. In shapefile format.
Environmental Boundaries
- World
Spatial Database of Protected Areas: Global vector database of marine
and terrestrial protected areas. Rather complicated to download from -
instructions at bottom of linked page.
- IUCN
2013 Red List: Set of shapefiles produced by the IUCN showing the
distribution of endangered species of plants and animals across the world
- Protected Planet: Map of
protected areas across the whole world, of almost all types. Available for
download by clicking the 'Download All' link on the homepage, and then
scrolling to the bottom and choosing KMZ, SHP or CSV.
Land Use
- Global
Land Use Dataset: Gridded data at 0.5 degree resolution showing
population density, potential natural vegetation, cropland extent, grazing
land extent, built-up land extent, crop extent (for 18 major crops) and
land suitability for cultivation
- Human
Influence and Footprint: Human Influence Index and Human Footprint
calculated from various factors which exert human influence on ecosystems,
for example population distribution, urban areas, navigable rivers etc.
Available at 30 arc-second resolution.
- Global
Agricultural Lands: Extent and intensity of use of agricultural lands
(both cropland and pasture) in 2000 from MODIS and SPOT images and
agricultural inventory data.
- Global Irrigated
Area and Rainfed Crops Areas: Vector mapping
of global irrigated cropland and rainfed
cropland.
- Crop
Calendar GIS: Gridded data on planting dates and harvesting dates
across the world for 19 crops. Available at 5 minute and 0.5 degree
resolutions.
- EarthStat:
Agricultural Land Use and potential use: A number of GIS datasets on
agricultural land use, including global cropland and pasture from 1700 to
2007, harvested areas and yields for 175 crops, and global fertiliser
application rates.
- ESPON Urban
Morphological Data: Data on urban areas for Europe including many
attributes.
- European
Urban Morphological Zones: Data derived from the CORINE landcover dataset showing all sets of urban areas lying
less than 200m apart.
Lakes, Oceans and other Water Sources
- Coastal Water
Quality: Quality of coastal waters across the globe measured by
chlorophyll concentrations from SeaWIFS
satellite. Data for 1998 and 2007.
- Global Reservoir and Dam Database:
Geographically-referenced data on all reservoirs with a storage capacity
of more than 0.1 cubic kilometres. The data consists of polygons outlining
reservoirs at high spatial resolution with extensive metadata about the
dam and reservoir. Registration required
Wars, Conflict and Crime
- ACLED: Armed Conflict Location
and Event Data - containing all reported conflict events in 50 countries
in the developing world. Data from 1997 to present, and in Afghanistan and
Pakistan from 2006 until present.
- Uppsala
Conflict Data Programme - Georeferenced Event Database: Locations of
instances of political violence in Africa and Asia.
- Global Terrorism Database: A
database of terrorist events (both domestic and international) across the
world from 1970-2008, including location and attribute information.
- Peace Research Institute Oslo: A
range of data including armed conflict locations, replication data, arms
trade flows and resource datasets.
Population
- Gridded Population of the
World: Includes raw population, population density, both historic,
current and predicted.
- Global
Rural-Urban Mapping Project: Based on the above, but includes
information on rural and urban population balances.
- WorldPop:
High-resolution, contemporary data on population across Africa, Asia and
Central/Southern America. Combines the AfriPop, AmeriPop and AsiaPop projects.
- Large
Urban Areas 1950-2050: Historic, current and future estimates of
populations in large urban areas of the world.
- Global
Urban Extent: Maps showing urban extent across the world, at 500m
resolution, derived from MODIS images. Requires email to author to
download
- GeoHive:
Population and country statistics. Not provided in GIS data formats,
but can easily be converted from CSV
Buildings, Roads and Points of Interest
- OpenStreetMap:
Crowd-sourced data for the whole world consisting of most things you'd
find on a standard local paper map: points of interest, buildings, roads
and road names, ferry routes etc.
- OSM Metro Extracts:
City-sized extracts of the OpenStreetMap
dataset, updated weekly for cities across the world
- POI Factory: Point of Interest
files originally designed for use in GPS units, but they can be loaded
into a GIS fairly easily. Widely varying quality, and coverage, but
includes such things as shop and business locations (eg.
all Tesco stores, all McDonald's restaurants) as well as places of
worship, speed cameras etc. Registration is required. To download data
in a GIS-ready form choose Garmin CSV format on the download page. The CSV
file will contain Latitude and Longitude in WGS-84 co-ordinates, as well
as descriptions.
- SimpleGeo's Places: Point of Interest data from SimpleGeo, provided as a 2Gb
Zip file and licensed under the Creative Commons license. Contains over 21
million POIs for over 63 countries.
- Nuclear
Power Station locations: Locations of all nuclear power stations
worldwide (according to the IAEA), provided as a Google Fusion Table. Export
to CSV for easy import to a GIS system
Transport and Communications
- Open Flights: Airport, airline
and route data across the globe. Data is provided as CSV files which can
be easily processed to produce GIS outputs. Data includes all known
airports, and a large number of routes betwen
airports.
- World
Port Index: Dataset from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
listing approximately 3700 ports across the world, with location and
facilities offered.
- Global
Roads Open Access Data Set: A vector dataset of roads across the
world, using a globally consistent data model, and suitable for mapping at
the 1:250,000 level. Only roads between settlements are included, not
residential streets, and the dataset is accurate to approximately 50m. This
dataset is in beta-testing at the moment and will be fully available
shortly
- Undersea Telecommunications Cables:
Open source undersea telecommunication cables map, updated frequently.
Data can be visualised in the embedded viewer or shapefiles can be
downloaded by clicking the Raw Data link on the top right.
- Capitaine
European Train Stations: Metadata for all train stations in Europe
including latitude and longitude.
Gazetteers (place/feature names)
- NGIS Country Files:
A list of names of regions, areas and populated places for each country in
the world, provided by the US Government, with geo-references for each
place.
- Geonames Country Information: List of all
countries in the world with ISO and ISO3 country code (eg.
GB for the United Kingdom and FR for France) with capital city, area,
population, internet top-level domain, currency, official languages and
neighbours.
- GRUMP
Settlement Points: Locations of individual settlements (as a time
series, showing new settlements appearing over time), derived from the
Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project.
Miscellaneous
- G-Econ: Geographically-based economic
data, basically providing measurements like GDP but on a raster cell basis
(known as Gross Cell Product).
- Internet Map: Data which
can be used to produce maps like those shown here
showing major linkages in the internet, as well as density of people
online.
Source- http://freegisdata.rtwilson.com/
Download
From SDI to Service and Application, Africa GIS 2005
Tutorial (Pretoria, South Africa), by Jiang Jie, National Geomatics Center
of China (10 MB 
)