Free and Open GIS data resources

Sep 192011
 

Open, free and pub­lic. Three terms, which when appear­ing before the word “GIS” make geo­g­ra­phers feel all warm and fuzzy (I think?). Geospa­tial data can be very costly, but free alter­na­tives may be suit­able, if not as use­ful, as their expen­sive coun­ter­parts. There­fore, its worth­while know­ing what data is avail­able for pub­lic con­sump­tion. I have com­piled a list of the open GIS data resources that I fre­quently make use of in my per­sonal projects. Hope­fully they become as use­ful to you, as they are to me. Con­tinue reading »

Open Flights; Mapping Global Connectivity

Sep 022011
 

Open FlightsAfter hav­ing seen the many iter­a­tions of the global con­nec­tiv­ity map, I have decided to give it a try myself. The maps are being pro­duced using this data, which offers pub­lic air-traffic data in tab­u­lar format. The data is avail­able in three cat­e­gories: air­ports, air­lines and routes. The air­ports and routes data can be manip­u­lated, com­bined and cleaned-up to cre­ate a com­pli­men­tary table that lists the lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude of each flights ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion. This allows us to con­nect each flight ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion. How­ever, straight lines of Con­tinue reading »