CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, is a unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, based at the Lamont campus in Palisades, New York. CIESIN works at the intersection of the social, natural, and information sciences, and specializes in on-line data and information management, spatial data integration and training, and interdisciplinary research related to human interactions in the environment. CIESIN’s mission is to provide access to and enhance the use of information worldwide, advancing understanding of human interactions in the environment and serving the needs of science and public and private decision making.
The G-Econ research project is devoted to developing a geophysically based data set on economic activity for the world. The current data set (GEcon 3.3) is now publicly available and covers "gross cell product" for all regions for 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005 and includes 27,500 terrestrial observations. The basic metric is the regional equivalent of gross domestic product.
Project Detail - Digital Preservation (Library of Congress). The GeoMAPP project is exploring ways to expand the capabilities of state governments to provide long-term access to geospatial data. The project is bringing together geospatial and archival staff in multiple states to identify, preserve, and make available temporal and superseded digital geospatial data with ongoing value. A key approach will include testing a geographically dispersed content-exchange network for the replication of state and local geospatial data among several states to promote preservation and access.
GeoCommons enables everyone to find, use and share geographic data and maps. Easily create rich interactive visualizations to solve problems without any experience using traditional mapping tools. GeoCommons provides a valuable data repository where GeoIQ customers can find and import data into their GeoIQ appliances.
The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.® (OGC) is a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organization that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location based services.
The Atlas describes and maps every change in the boundaries of all United States counties from the early 1600s to 2000. In addition, the atlas compiles and maps all changes in colonial or territorial and state boundaries, including the evolution of the states, plus county name changes, unsuccessful proposed counties, and attachments of unorganized counties and non-county areas to operational counties. In most cases, a separate map is available for each different county configuration. view maps or Download Historical State and County Shapefiles. Zipped files include maps, database and supplemental texts
A variety of tools for working with datasets. data visualization, mapping, blogs, data catalogs, R tutorial, web crawlers, data mashers, code, lists of projects, APIs, etc.
This geographic names data set provides a "mashup" of URLs for official city and county government web sites and city and county location data from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). GNIS data includes incorporated places, census designated areas, unincorporated places, counties, and populated places.
OBIS-USA is a one-stop source for biogeographic data collected from U.S. waters and oceanic regions-the Arctic, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. It provides access to highly distributed data sets from a multitude of partners DOCUMENTing where and when species were observed or collected. The site allows one to examine each data set to assess its applicability for a variety of uses. Current functionality allows the user to view the data and FGDC compliant metadata as well as to view geographic, temporal or spatial extent; the taxonomic depth and richness.
The GeoMAPP effort aims to address the preservation of “at risk” and temporally significant digital geospatial content. Geospatial data layers containing information about land parcels, zoning, roads, and jurisdictional boundaries change regularly. Existing copies of these data are often at risk of being overwritten when updates or changes are made and these superseded snapshots of data are then lost for future use and analysis.