Finding Spatial Data

Spatial data can be found in lots of places! Essentially, as long as your data tells you where something is—place, address, lat/long–the GIS is going to have tools to import, visualize, and work with that data.

City Data Portals

Many cities maintain open data portals that typically include a variety of spatial data, for example:

• Milano
• Paris
• London
• San Francisco

Country-level Data

Many countries serve up data for administrative areas, often as separate tabular and spatial data.

Tip: tabular joins are often the easiest way to make these data work in a GIS environment!

• Italy
  • Administrative boundaries
• European Union
  • Eurostat Database
  • GIS Boundary Files
  • Gridded Data
• United Kingdom
• United States–NHGIS
• New Zealand

Land Cover Data

Often involves big rasters!

• Europe–Copernicus
• US National Land Cover Database (NLCD)

Other Cool Options

Any spreadsheet containing latitude and longitude coordinates can be easily imported into a GIS, which opens up a world of possibility! For example:

• Inside Airbnb