{"id":4117,"date":"2025-07-28T14:39:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T18:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/?page_id=4117"},"modified":"2025-09-12T15:08:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T19:08:17","slug":"open-data-portals","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/geodata\/geosearch\/open-data-portals\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Data Portals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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.\u00a0 Maintained by governments, NGOs, and research consortia, these well documented, regularly updated datasets are perfect for research and analysis.<\/p>\n<h3>North American Open Data Portals<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/geohub.lio.gov.on.ca\/maps\/lio::ontario-imagery-web-map-service-oiwms\/about\">Ontario Imagery Web Map Service<\/a> &#8211; 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.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/apps.nationalmap.gov\/downloader\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">USGS The National Map Downloader<\/a> \u2014 Search and download US base-layer GIS data (elevation, hydrography, boundaries, land cover, topo maps) with web services and bulk options.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.census.gov\/geographies\/mapping-files\/time-series\/geo\/tiger-line-file.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">U.S. Census Bureau TIGER\/Line<\/a> \u2014 Administrative boundaries and geographies (e.g., tracts, blocks, roads) in GIS formats for mapping and analysis across the U.S.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/coast.noaa.gov\/dataviewer\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com#\/\">NOAA Digital Coast Data Access Viewer<\/a> \u2014 Discover, customize, and download lidar, land cover, and coastal imagery for U.S. coasts.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bts.gov\/ntad?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD)<\/a> \u2014 National transportation networks and facilities available in Shapefile, FGDB, GeoJSON, and web services for multimodal analysis.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">USDA NRCS \u2014<\/a> Geospatial Data Gateway \u2014 One-stop access to soils, land cover, imagery, and natural-resources layers with AOI selection and multiple output formats.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.epa.gov\/geospatial\/epa-geospatial-data?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">U.S. EPA Geospatial Data<\/a> \u2014 Environmental datasets and services (facilities, water, air, land) supporting open, FAIR access for decision-making.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/content\/data\/finding-and-sharing\/bc-data-catalogue?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">British Columbia<\/a> \u2014 BC Data Catalogue \u2014 Province-wide datasets (many GIS-ready) from B.C. ministries and agencies under an open license.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.donneesquebec.ca\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\">Donn\u00e9es Qu\u00e9bec (Quebec Open Data)<\/a> \u2014 Provincial portal offering downloadable datasets (including geospatial) plus an interactive preview map.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.inegi.org.mx\/app\/mapas\/\">INEGI (Mexico) Mapas &amp; Marco Geoestad\u00edstico<\/a> \u2014 National statistical and geospatial downloads (maps, geo-statistical framework, layers) for Mexico.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Global Open Data Portals<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/search.earthdata.nasa.gov\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"2886\" data-end=\"2945\">NASA Earthdata Search<\/a> \u2014 Unified discovery and access to NASA\u2019s open Earth-science data (satellite, airborne, model) with visualization and subsetting.<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/data.humdata.org\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"3323\" data-end=\"3389\">OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)<\/a> \u2014 Country and crisis-focused open datasets (including GIS layers) for humanitarian analysis and response.<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/gadm.org\/data.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"3540\" data-end=\"3604\">GADM \u2014 Global Administrative Areas<\/a> \u2014 High-resolution administrative boundaries for all countries, downloadable by country or world in GIS formats.<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.naturalearthdata.com\/downloads\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"3761\" data-end=\"3821\">Natural Earth<\/a> \u2014 Public-domain global vector and raster base layers at multiple map scales (1:10m, 1:50m, 1:110m).<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link cursor-pointer\" href=\"https:\/\/portal.opentopography.org\/datasets\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"3966\" data-end=\"4039\">OpenTopography \u2014 Global\/Regional Grids<\/a> \u2014 Centralized access to global and regional topography\/elevation datasets (e.g., SRTM, NASADEM) and derivatives.<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldpop.org\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"4197\" data-end=\"4234\">WorldPop<\/a> \u2014 Open, high-resolution gridded population data and tools for demographics and population distributions worldwide.<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/data.globalforestwatch.org\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"4394\" data-end=\"4471\">Global Forest Watch \u2014 Open Data Portal<\/a> \u2014 GIS-ready forest and land-use datasets (loss, alerts, concessions, etc.) with downloads and APIs.<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"decorated-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldclim.org\/data\/index.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\" data-start=\"4616\" data-end=\"4670\">WorldClim<\/a> \u2014 Global historical and future climate surfaces (e.g., temperature, precipitation) available as GeoTIFF grids at multiple resolutions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.\u00a0 Maintained by governments, NGOs, and research consortia, these well documented, regularly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/geodata\/geosearch\/open-data-portals\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"parent":3992,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4117","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P5kNDa-14p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4117"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4425,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4117\/revisions\/4425"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/gmdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}