All Guides: GIS: Data

GIS Data

This page contains a few of the many data resources available online. When searching for data online here are a few tips:

If the data, or survey used to collect the data, has a specific name then use that name in your search.
Shapefiles are a common format used for GIS. Use the word 'Shapefile' or '.shp' in your search.
Use location names in your search relevant to the location you are wanting data about. E.g., Minnesota or Saint Paul.
Search for maps or scholarly literature about the places and issues relevant to to your map, they may have used, and cited, data that you can also use.
If you know, or have an idea, of who collects the data you want then search for data published by that organization. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a lot of data about agriculture in the United States.

For more data try Macalester's Social Science Data gudie

Living Atlas
ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. Find maps and data for integration with your projects in ArcGIS. Requires Macalester sign-in.
IPUMS National Historic GIS
The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides easy access to summary tables and time series of population, housing, agriculture, and economic data, along with GIS-compatible boundary files, for years from 1790 through the present and for all levels of U.S. census geography, including states, counties, tracts, and blocks.
IPUMS Terra
IPUMS Terra uses location-based integration to make population microdata, area-level data describing places, and spatially gridded raster data interoperable. IPUMS Terra data span the globe and extend over several decades.
OpenAfrica
Grassroots intiated project for sharing data about Africa.
Inspire Geoportal
Spatial data from countries in the European Union.
WorldPop
Spatial databases about human populations around the world.
AID Data GeoQuery
Explore and download spatial data about topics relevant to those interested in policy and development.
Earth Engine Data Catalog
Earth Engine's public data archive includes more than forty years of historical imagery and scientific datasets, updated and expanded daily.
EARTHDATA
Data from NASA's Earth Science Data Systems program.

Minnesota Geospatial Commons
The Minnesota Geospatial Commons is a collaborative place for users and publishers of geospatial resources about Minnesota.
Minnesota Open Data
Data generated from the executive branch of the Minnesota state government.
Saint Paul Open Data
Open Data Minneapolis
Access to public data about the city of Minneapolis.
Open Twin Cities
Citizen driven open data project for the Twin Cities.

GeoCommons
User contributed open data from around the world.
MIT GeoWeb
Includes a browsable map for finding data related to a selected location.

ICPSR This link opens in a new window
Index of social science datasets with access to all sets. Most data sets require knowledge of a statistical software package--such as SPSS or STATA--in order to use. Includes searchable bibliography of research done relative to available data sets.