Open data is typically released under Creative Commons, Open Government, or similar licenses. These datasets can be used, modified, and shared by anyone, for any purpose, at no cost. Maintained by governments, NGOs, and research consortia, these well documented, regularly updated datasets are perfect for research and analysis.
North American Open Data Portals
- Ontario Imagery Web Map Service – The Ontario Imagery Web Map Service (OIWMS) provides free, province wide, high quality satellite and aerial imagery of Ontario through OGC compliant and ArcGIS web map services, with supporting metadata and user guides.
- USGS The National Map Downloader — Search and download US base-layer GIS data (elevation, hydrography, boundaries, land cover, topo maps) with web services and bulk options.
- U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line — Administrative boundaries and geographies (e.g., tracts, blocks, roads) in GIS formats for mapping and analysis across the U.S.
- NOAA Digital Coast Data Access Viewer — Discover, customize, and download lidar, land cover, and coastal imagery for U.S. coasts.
- National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) — National transportation networks and facilities available in Shapefile, FGDB, GeoJSON, and web services for multimodal analysis.
- USDA NRCS — Geospatial Data Gateway — One-stop access to soils, land cover, imagery, and natural-resources layers with AOI selection and multiple output formats.
- U.S. EPA Geospatial Data — Environmental datasets and services (facilities, water, air, land) supporting open, FAIR access for decision-making.
- British Columbia — BC Data Catalogue — Province-wide datasets (many GIS-ready) from B.C. ministries and agencies under an open license.
- Données Québec (Quebec Open Data) — Provincial portal offering downloadable datasets (including geospatial) plus an interactive preview map.
- INEGI (Mexico) Mapas & Marco Geoestadístico — National statistical and geospatial downloads (maps, geo-statistical framework, layers) for Mexico.
Global Open Data Portals
- NASA Earthdata Search — Unified discovery and access to NASA’s open Earth-science data (satellite, airborne, model) with visualization and subsetting.
- OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) — Country and crisis-focused open datasets (including GIS layers) for humanitarian analysis and response.
- GADM — Global Administrative Areas — High-resolution administrative boundaries for all countries, downloadable by country or world in GIS formats.
- Natural Earth — Public-domain global vector and raster base layers at multiple map scales (1:10m, 1:50m, 1:110m).
- OpenTopography — Global/Regional Grids — Centralized access to global and regional topography/elevation datasets (e.g., SRTM, NASADEM) and derivatives.
- WorldPop — Open, high-resolution gridded population data and tools for demographics and population distributions worldwide.
- Global Forest Watch — Open Data Portal — GIS-ready forest and land-use datasets (loss, alerts, concessions, etc.) with downloads and APIs.
- WorldClim — Global historical and future climate surfaces (e.g., temperature, precipitation) available as GeoTIFF grids at multiple resolutions.