“Global” Spatial Datasets

“Global” Spatial Datasets
(Revised 4/13/07)
This is far from an exhaustive list. It’s really just a bunch I’ve used or heard something about. Not all of these are really global, and a few may not actually exist yet!

Administrative boundaries/changes

Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) (http://www3.who.int/whosis/gis/salb/salb_home.htm)

International Potato Center (http://www.cipotato.org)

FAO – Africover (http://www.africover.org)
International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT; http://www.ciat.cgiar.org)
ESRI (Data & Maps CD)

IPUMS (http://www.ipums.umn.edu)
UNEP/GRID-WRI-NCGIA Asia population datasets (http://www.northamerica.unep.net/datasets/datalist.php)

Look at metadata source list for e.g. GPW, Poverty Mapping for more

Population

Gridded Population of the World (GPW; http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/)

Gridded Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP; http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/)

Landscan (http://www.ornl.gov/sci/landscan/)

Populated places

GRUMP (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/)

Night-time lights (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/dmsp/index.html)

Gazetteers

GEOnet Names Server, US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) (http://gnswww.nga.mil/geonames/GNS/index.jsp)

World Gazetteer (http://www.world-gazetteer.com/)

City Population (http://www.citypopulation.de)

Columbia (http://www.columbiagazetteer.org/)

Getty (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/tgn/)

Demographic indicators

CIESIN - Poverty Mapping (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/povmap/)

Infant mortality rate

Underweight children

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS; http://www.measuredhs.com/)

Subnational polygons (Statmapper)

Cluster centroids (requires registration)

UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS; Coming soon? http://www.childinfo.org/)

Economic indicators

CIESIN – Poverty mapping (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/povmap/)

G-Econ - Nordhaus (http://gecon.yale.edu/)

Agricultural censuses, crop data

Agromaps (http://www.fao.org/landandwater/agll/agromaps/interactive/index.jsp)

Gridded Livestock of the World (http://www.fao.org/ag/AGAinfo/resources/en/glw/default.html)
International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Irrigation grid (http://www.iwmigiam.org/)
USDA Soils (http://soils.usda.gov/use/worldsoils/mapindex/order.html)
ISRIC Soil Degradtion (http://www.isric.org/UK/About+ISRIC/Projects/Track+Record/GLASOD.htm)
FAO/ IFPRI/CIESIN Soil maps, modifiers (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/soils/)

Infrastructure

Roads

VMAP/NIMA roads/railroads (http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/)

“metadata”: http://earth-info.nga.mil/publications/specs/index.html

CIESIN paper on roads (http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/dsj/5/0/5_223/_article)

Airports (http://www.partow.net/miscellaneous/airportdatabase/)

Just a free example others I know are proprietary

Climate/Ecology

International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) data library (http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/index.html)
University of East Anglia (UEA) Climate Research Unit (CRU; http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/)
Global Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/GAEZ/index.htm)
Malaria

Mapping Malaria in Africa (MARA; http://www.mara.org.za/)

Malaria Atlas Project (http://www.map.ox.ac.uk/index.htm)

Land use/Land Cover (this category is even more lacking than the others)

Africover (http://www.africover.org/)
Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) (http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/interdisc/readmes/pal_NDVI.shtml)

Terrain (elevation /slope)

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/ or elsewhere…)
GTOPO30 (http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/gtopo30.html)

Other

Natural disaster hotspots (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/chrr/research/hotspots/coredata.html)

Clearinghouses/more lists

Geonetwork (UN/CGIAR) (http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/)
CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (http://www.csi.cgiar.org/index.asp)
Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Association (http://www.gsdi.org/SDILinks.asp) and /newsletters.asp
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (http://geodata.grid.unep.ch/results.php)
FAO inventory (http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/a0118e/a0118e00.htm)
Regional:

SAHIMS, Southern Africa (http://www.sahims.net/)

Latin America: International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT; http://www.ciat.cgiar.org)

National population- and area-weighted aggregates of spatial data (i.e. if you want to run a cross-country regression based on spatially constructed covariates without having to use GIS):

Population, Landscape and Climate Estimates (PLACE; http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/place/)