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 »