Open spatial data

There is a lot of spatial data available on the Internet, here you can find a lot of links to most important services in Finland and internationally.

• Finnish spatial data services:
  • download services
  • web services
• International spatial data services:
  • metadata / search
  • download services
    • General vector data
    • Administrative borders
    • Satellite images
    • Digital Elevation Models
    • Land cover / vegetation
    • Population
    • Others
  • web services

 

Finnish spatial data services

National Land Survey's Paikkatietoikkuna is a central place for discovering Finnish spatial data sets. It includes:

• Map window can be used to view maps and browse geographic information.
• Metadata search can be used to search for information about spatial data sets and geographic information services.

 

Finnish spatial data download services

• AVAA Portal
  • PaITuli
  • KOTUS dialect databases, SMEAR weather data.
• National land survey of Finland open data service. The same datasets are available from Kapsi's service, which is more suitable for downloading bigger datasets via HTTP, FTP or RSYNC, but has no map for selecting map sheets.
  • Basic map, topographic database, background maps and general maps
  • Orthoimages and laser scanning data
  • DEMs, height zone maps and hill shading
  • Place names
  • Administrative borders
• Finnish environmental administration (SYKE) Open data service provides a lot of datasets about Finnish environment, including:
  • CORINE land cover 2000, 2006 and 2012
  • EU Water Framework Directive water bodies and drainage basins
  • Flood risk areas, flood risk likelihood zones and observed flood areas
  • General plans (footprints)
  • Ground water protection areas
  • Hydrological monitoring sites
  • IMAGE satellite image mosaic 2000, 2006 and 2012
  • Lake depth, rivers
  • Nature protection areas, Natura areas
  • Valuable rocky outcrop areas, valuable moraine formations and valuable wind and coastal deposits
  • Water management areas monitoring sites
  • YKR-datasets about community structure
• Natural resources institute: national forest inventory thematic datasets, 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2013.
• Metsäkeskus forest datasets, mostly about privately owned forests.
• Statistics Finland:
  • Gridded data about population 1x1km
  • Paavo - statistics about post code areas
  • Population of municipalities
  • Traffic accidents
  • Educational institutions
  • Production and industrial facilities
• Finnish Transport Agency
  • Digiroad, suitable for routing and geocoding
  • Railways
  • Sea depth
• Finnish meteorological institute's open data includes weather real-time observations, time series and forecasts.
• Geological survey of Finland HAKKU service includes a lot of geological data, including:
  • Aeroelectromagnetic maps of Finland in-phase component map, apparent resistivity map, quadrature component map
  • Acid sulfate soils 1:250 000
  • Rock geochemical data of Finland
  • Aeromagnetic anomaly map of Finland
  • Aeroradiometric maps of Finland: potassium map, thorium map, total count, ternary map
  • Bedrock of Finland: 1:100 000, 1:200 000, 1:1 000 000, 1:5 000 000
  • Ground Investigations
  • High altitude aeromagnetic data of Finland
  • Superficial deposits of Finland: 1:20 000 / 1:50 000, 1:200 000, 1:1 000 000
  • Training material of geophysics
• National Board of Antiquities web site provides ancient sites registry, built heritage, built cultural environments and world heritage sites in Finland. 
• University of Jyväskylä - Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, LIPAS - Finnish sport facilities

 

Finnish web services

• National land survey, web services.
  • Place names WFS is available for free for limited use.
  • In pilot use also (Paikkatiedon palvelualustan pilotti) background map and layers from topographic database WMS, WMTS WFS are available. Also in generalized scales. Additionally the map may have custom style using SLD. This service will be closed 31.12.2018.
  • Vector tiles from BETA service.
  • Finnish Geodetic Institute, hill shading WMS. Test service: http://hillshading.fgi.fi/cgi-bin/wms_rinnevalo_566
• Kapsi, WMS and TMS service of National Land board's Basic map, Background map and ortho images.
• Ministry of Education and Culture, AVAA, Open Street Map web services: WMS, WMTS, WFS and TMS.
• Agency for Rural Affairs, fields register WMS. Registration is required.
• Geological Survey of Finland, WMS and WFS services with many geological data sets.
• Environmental administration WMS: same data as for data download.
• Finnish Meteorological Institute, open data.
• Latuviitta (Jukka Rahkonen), WMS ja WFS: A lot of open Finnish datasets.
• Liikuntapaikat.fi: WMS and WFS. Sports facilities. Registration is required.
• Statistics Finland, web services, population in 1x1 km and 5x5km grids, statistics about postcode areas and administrative units, schools, production units, road accidents
• Traffic Agency, WMS and WFS: land, rail and sea traffic datasets

 

International services

Metadata services

• European commission, INSPIRE Geoportal
• Spatineo, catalogue of WMS, WMTS and WFS services, tens of thousands of services from whole world, also a lot of Finnish services.
• ESA, Copernicus Space Component Data
• European Environment Agency, Data and Maps, a lot of data related to environment from all Europe, for example: Natura areas, CORINE land cover, drainage basins, digital elevation model, data about water and air quality etc.
• FAO, GeoNetwork.
• National Snow & Ice Data Center (USA), Scientific Data Search, inc. 99 global data sets, besides ice and snow also a lot of other related datasets.
• EDENext, Data Archive, the data spans a wide number of categories but mainly collated for use in research of vector borne disease epidemiology. Archive includes data only for EDENext research area = Europa and North-Africa. Vegetation, climate, population etc.
• Robin Wilson, Free GIS Data, a very long list of open GIS data, at the end also country specific lists.
• Wikipedia, List of geocoding systems.

 

Data download services

General vector data

• OpenStreetMap, please be careful with the free data in Shape format. It does not include all features and has limited support for big or complicated polygons. For example all big lakes are missing and likely all holes in polygons are missing. Use rather data in pbf format. For changing format you may use QGIS or OGR (look for examples here).
• EuroGeographics,  EuroGlobalMap (1:1 000 000).
• NGA (National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), VMAP, general vector data produced in 1991-93. VMAP0 data is in scale 1:1 000 000 and is available globally. VMAP1 is in scale 1:1:250 000 and is for free available only from certain parts of world, for example from USA and Russia. More information may be found from Wikipedia. The data is originally in VPF format, in more practical shape format the data can be downloaded from GIS-Lab pages: VMAP0 and VMAP1.
• Natural Earth, general vector data: coast lines, contours, rivers and lakes, glaciers, country borders etc. There are available also designed raster maps suitable to be used as background maps. The map scale is 1:10 000 000.
• WWF, Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD), lakes, rivers and wetlands. 2004. Map scale: 1:1 000 000 to 1:3 000 000.
• NOAA, GSHHG, global coastlines, rivers, lakes and country borders, 2013.

 

Administrative borders

• Global Administrative Areas, 2012.
• FAO, Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL), 1990 ->, for each year a separate version. The data includes also administrative units inside countries, but their level of detail varies, for example Finnish municipality borders are not included, but for other Scandinavian and Baltic countries these are included.
• Bjorn Sandvik, World Borders Dataset, world countries and population, 2005.
• Eurostat, Administrative units / Statistical units, 2003-2010. Several map scales, from 1:3 000 000. Only Europe.

 

Satellite images

• USGS, Long term archive, a very big spatial data archive, includes a lot of satellite images, 1937 -> . EarthExplorer service enables downloading several datasets, most important of these are:
  • Landsat archive and new images with 24h delay, resolution: 15-80m, 1972 ->
    • GLS, Global Land Survey, selection of Landsat images from years: 1975, 1990, 2000, 2005 ja 2010.
  • EO-1, 10- to 30-meter multispectral and hyperspectral data from the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Extended Mission, 2000 to present.
  • MODIS provides continuous global coverage every one to two days, and collects data from 36 spectral bands. Resolution: 250-1000m. 1999 -> Wide range of different datasets.
• NASA, Reverb, all NASA's Earth Science data, inc. Landsat, EO-1, MODIS and a lot of others.

• NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, inc:
  • AVHRR, he Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) is a cross-track scanning system with five spectral bands having a resolution of 1.1 km and a frequency of earth scans twice per day, 1979 - present.
• JRC, Image2000, CORINE land cover project's satellite images. This service requires registration, which may take several days.
• NASA, Blue Marble, resolution: 500m. A separate image for each month of the year. Nice colors, suitable as background map.
• NASA ja METI, ASTER, resolution: 15, 30, 90m, 14 channels. All products are not open, from archive you may find still also open images. Some products, for example L1A images, are available only for educational use, if application is approved. For educational and scientific use also new images may be ordered.
• CNES, SPOT, images have not been available for free, but on 23.1.2014 was made a decision, that images older than 5 years, will be available for non-commercial use. Download service is promised for the end of year.

 

Digital Elevation Models

• ESA, De Montfort University, ACE2, resolution: 3" (90m), 30" ja 5'. Based on STRM data, but has been corrected and filled, if the original data has been missing or is wrong. Besides the height the data includes for each grid the data source and accuracy estimation.
• Jonathan de Ferranti, resolution3'' (90m), Based on STRM data, but has been corrected and filled, if the original data has been missing or is wrong.
• NASA and NGA, SRTM, resolution 3'' (90m), 2005. Available only for: 56° S ... 60° N, for Finland only southern coast is available.
• USGS, GMTED2010, resolution: 30'', 15'' ja 7.5''.
• ASTER GDEM, resolution 1'' (30m), 2009. Available for: 83° S ... 83° N. Please note, that although this dataset has smallest grid size, it includes a lot of errors and often is not more precise than ACE2 or STRM. 
• GDEx user interface provides ASTER GDEM and STRM data, enables defining area and format for the data download.

 

Digital Elevation Models including oceans

• Columbia University, GMRT, is based on several sources, inc. ASTER GDEM ja Multibeam swath bathymetry data (100-m resolution). resolution: 1'' ja 100m (water).
• NOAA, ETOPO1, two versions: according to bedrock or including also glaciers. Grid resolution: 1'. Includes also water areas.
• Tom Patterson, CleanTOPO2, resolution: 4,9km.
• BODC, GEBCO, bathymetry for the world's oceans. Grid resolution: 1' and 30''. 2008.

 

Land cover / vegetation

• EEA, CORINE Land Cover, resolution: 100m ja 250m, 1990, 2000, 2006. Only Europe.
• FAO, Global Land Cover-SHARE, 2014, resolution: 30'' (1km).
• ESA, GlobCove, 2005-06 ja 2009, resolution: 300m.
• JRC, Global Land Cover 2000, resolution: 1km.
• USGS, JRC UNL, Global Land Cover Characteristics Data Base, 1992-93, resolution: 1 km.
• Global Land Cover Facility, Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI): AVHRR products: Global Land Cover ja Continuous Fields Tree Cover, MODIS products: 32-Day Composite, 16-Day Vegetation Index, Vegetation Continuous Fields, and Landsat Tree Cover.
• VITO, SPOT Vegetation Programme, resolution: 1km. Updated continuously: 1998 - 2014 .

 

Population

• NASA, SEDAC (Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center) a lot of socioeconomic datasets, including:
  • Gridded Population of the World, population and density, 1990, 1995, 2000. resolution: 2,5'. Also as WMS service.
• JRC, A global map of Accessibility, travel time to the closest 50 000 town. Resolution: 30''. 2000.
• Eurostat, Population Distribution, inc. European population, resolution: 1x1km and densely populated areas 2006, 2011.

 

Others

• HELCOM Map and data Service, a lot of data about the Baltic Sea.

• WorldClim, global weather dataset includes monthly minimum, maximum and average air temperature, precipitation and bioclim. Data is available in grid resolutions 30 arc seconds (about 1x1 km) and 2.5, 5 and10 arc minutes. There are available also modeled data sets about past and future.

• CGIAR-CSI, Historic Climate Database, 1901-2006. Resolution: 30'. Clouds, different temperature statistics, precipitation etc.
• CGIAR-CSI, Global Aridity and Potential Evapo-Transpiration database, resolution: 30''. 2008.
• FAO etc, Harmonized World Soil Database, resolution: 30''. Last update: 2012.
• NASA, Soil Collections, several datasets.
• UNEP etc, World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).
• Marc Wick, GeoNames. A database of place names.
• National Oceanographic Data Center (USA), Archive of national and international marine environmental and ecosystem datasets.
• Polar Data Catalogue A primarily Canadian archive of free RADARSAT imagery as well as Arctic, Antarctic, and other cryospheric data sets covering a range of disciplines, from natural sciences and policy to health and social sciences.
• BODC, sea level data. 1991 ->
• Species occurrence data: GBIF, HerpNET, OBIS, ORNIS, REMIB

• GENESYS, crop (genebank) collection data

International web services

• Bing Maps WMS services are license based, but are included for free into MapInfo 10.5 licenses. MapInfo license includes aerial images and "hybrid" map. Guidelines from using the dataset from MapInfo.
• HELCOM Map and data Service, a lot of data about the Baltic Sea.

• Open Street Map WMS services

 

For ArcGIS users

• ESRI ArcGIS.com ArcGIS Server interface services may be used with ArcGIS products.
  • Aineistot.esri.fi maps, several datasets about Finland, inc. background maps, administrative borders, population, buildings, addresses etc.
  • Basemap maps, that are especially easy to use from ArcMap. The best content about Finland is available from these layers:
    • OpenStreetMap, exact road map, quality varies from place to place. No use restrictions.
    • Imagery, satellite imagery, from metropolitan area very exact images, otherwise about from scale 1:75 000. No use restrictions.

    • Topographic map, available from scale 1:5000. Hill-shading and in more detailed scales also contours. No use restrictions.

    • DeLorme World Basemap, topographic map with contours, from scale 1:300 000.
    • National Geographic Basemap
  • Landsat satellite images, mm. False Color/Near Infrared 1975-2005, Agriculture 1990-2005, Landsat NDVI Change, Landsat Time Enabled Imagery, Healthy Vegetation 1990-2005, Atmospheric Penetration 1990-2005, Vegetation Analysis 1990-2005, Land / Water Boundary 1990-2005, Shortwave Infrared 1990-2005.
  • Open data from Finland - Avoimia paikkatietoaineistoja Suomesta, this group includes open datasets from Finland.
  • Attention! ArcGIS.com datasets may be used in ArcMap also in EUREF-FIN or KKJ coordinate system, but it is a lot slower and also the image quality is worse. Use rather this coordinate system: Predefined -> Projected Coordinate Systems -> World -> WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere).