As a newcomer to using GIS for research, I am wondering if there are online repositories for spatial data, similar to package repositories for Linux distributions.
For instance, I would be able to find things like "bathymetric map of the world's oceans", or "administrative regions map for the United States", etc.
Is there such a repository/website where I can download such data? Or do I have to "start from scratch" and manually draw a map of the world if I need one?
Answer
Natural Earth is a great resource for raster and vector data describing the environment.
Openstreetmap is good for man-made things (roads, cities, buildings).
Unfortunately downloading administrative boundaries (and the associated census data) for countries is usually a fairly complex procedure, despite the fact that the data is usually publicly available.
No comments:
Post a Comment