Tag: GIS Data
Understanding Scale
Scale is the relationship that the depicted feature on map has to its actual size in the real word. All maps are modeled representations of the real world and therefore the features are reduced in size when mapped. In other words, scale is the measurement of the amount of reduction a mapped feature has to [...]
Australian GIS Data and Resources
Links to finding free and low-cost data for Australia. Also find pointers for GIS resources pertaining to Australia. Unfortunately there is not a lot of free data to be found.
USGS Celebrates 125 Years of Topographic Mapping
December 3rd, 2009 marks the 125th anniversary of the national program for topographic mapping for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS was founded in 1879 by an act of Congress and tasked with the “classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain“. [...]
Geo-Volunteerism
The New York Times is the latest publication to profile the various crowdsourcing efforts to collect geographic data: From Petaluma to Peshawar, these amateurs are arming themselves with GPS devices and easy-to-use software to create digital maps where none were available before, or fixing mistakes and adding information to existing ones. Like contributors to Wikipedia before [...]
Ordnance Survey Data to be Made Freely Available
A press release from the British government entitled “Re-mapping the future for Ordnance Survey – making public data public” has announced that the Ordnance Survey will “will open up its data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information.” The announcement comes after a protracted battle by groups such [...]