Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Online Resources

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Data & Resources

ASPRS Aerial Data Catalog
Catalog for locating aerial photography over the U.S. and international coverage areas.

Bytes of the Big Apple 
Bytes of the Big Apple is a family of software data and geographic base map files for the City of New York. The Department of City Planning offers these products for free download or by a license.

Cornell University Library GIS Resources Page

Cornell University Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR)
CUGIR is an active online repository in the National Spatial Data Clearinghouse program. CUGIR provides geospatial data and metadata for New York State, with special emphasis on those natural features relevant to agriculture, ecology, natural resources, and human-environment interactions.

Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)
The FGDC coordinates the sharing of geographic data, maps, and online services through an online portal, geodata.gov, that searches metadata held within the NSDI Clearinghouse Network.

Geo.Data.gov
Data.gov increases the ability of the public to easily find, download, and use datasets that are generated and held by the Federal Government. Data.gov provides descriptions of the Federal datasets (metadata), information about how to access the datasets, and tools that leverage government datasets.

Mapcruzin.com
Free GIS shapefiles, software, resources and geography maps.

Natural Earth
Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.

New York City OpenData
NYC OpenData makes the wealth of public data generated by various New York City agencies and other City organizations available for public use. The data sets are available in a variety of machine-readable formats and are refreshed when new data becomes available.

New York State GIS Clearinghouse
The NYS GIS Clearinghouse, operated by the New York State Office of Cyber Security, was established to disseminate information about New York's Statewide GIS Coordination Program and to provide access to the New York State GIS Data and Metadata Repository.

New Jersey Geographic Information Network
The NJ Office of Information Technology provides access to NJ data downloads, map files, static maps, etc.

Nordpil: World database of large urban areas 1950 - 2050
This database represents the historic, current and future estimates and projections with number of inhabitants for the world's largest urban areas from 1950-2050. The data covers cities and other urban areas with more than 750,000 people.

Westchester County GIS
Westchester County GIS develops, maintains and distributes digital data and orthophotography for Westchester Co. NY.

Stanford University Library data resource page

US Census TIGER files and products
TIGER products are spatial extracts from the Census Bureau's MAF/TIGER database containing features such as roads, railroads, rivers as well as legal and statistical geographic areas.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 
The EPA Geospatial Data Access Project provides downloadable files of facilities and sites subject to environmental regulation.

U.S. Census American FactFinder
American FactFinder provides access to data about the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Island Areas.

 

Free Software

CartoDB:
Create maps with your data and store it in the cloud. 

Quantum GIS 
Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly open source GIS licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

Batchgeo
Make maps from a list of multiple locations, use addresses, postal codes, or coordinates. Free hosting for your own interactive map locator.

GeoCommons
GeoCommons enables you to find, use and share geographic data and maps.

GRASS GIS tutorial
GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a free and open source GIS software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics and map production, spatial modeling, and 3D visualization.

OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and is free to use under an open license.

Tutorials

Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis
Online tutorials, downloadable material, etc.

MIT: Spatial Database Management and Advanced GIS
This class offers a very in-depth set of materials on spatial database management, including materials on the tools needed to work in spatial database management, and the applications of that data to real-life problem solving. Exercises and tools for working with SQL, as well as sample database sets, are provided. A real-life final project is presented in the projects section.