Summary

In this chapter, we surveyed a number of sources of freely-available geospatial data. For vector-format data, we looked at OpenStreetMap, a collaborative site where people can create and edit vector maps worldwide; TIGER, which is a service of the US Census Bureau; the Natural Earth Data web site; the GSHHG high-resolution shoreline database; and the simple but effective World Borders Dataset.

For geospatial data in raster format, we looked at Landsat imagery, the GLOBE digital elevation model, and the high-resolution National Elevation Dataset for the US and its protectorates.

We then looked at two sources of place name data: the GEOnet Names Server, which provides information about official place names for every country other than the US and Antarctica, and GNIS, which provides official place names for the United States.

This completes our survey of geospatial data sources. In the next chapter, we will use the Python toolkits described in Chapter 3, Python Libraries for Geospatial...