Open spatial data

Nowadays, a lot of open spatial data is available. There are links to some important services in Finland and internationally below.

• Finnish spatial data
• International spatial data services:
  • Metadata / search
  • Download services
    • General vector data
    • Administrative borders
    • Satellite images
    • Digital Elevation Models
    • Land cover / vegetation
    • Population
    • Climate
    • Others

Finnish spatial data services

• National Land Survey's geodata portal Paikkatietoikkuna – wide collection of different datasets for browsing.
• Paikkatietohakemisto metadata service – search spatial data sets and OGC services
• Paituli – data from governmental organizations and Finnish researchers.
• GeoPortti GeoCubes Finland  – a harmonized, multi-resolution raster geodata repository containing several national datasets from themes like DEM, superficial deposits, land cover and forestry.
• National land survey of Finland open data service  – basic map, topographic database, topographic, background and general maps, orthoimages, laser scanning data, DEMs, place names, administrative borders, etc. The same datasets are available from Kapsi's service, which is more suitable for downloading bigger datasets via HTTP, FTP or RSYNC (web services).
• Finnish environmental administration (SYKE) Open data service provides a lot of datasets about Finnish environment, including land cover, IMAGE satellite mosaic, nature protection areas, lakes, rivers, ground water, floods, YKR-datasets about community structure, and so on. Also available as WMS/WFS.
• Natural resources institute – national forest inventory thematic datasets.
• Metsäkeskus forest datasets – mostly concerning privately-owned forests, but also 1m canopy height model.
• Statistics Finland  – population, educational institutions, production and industrial facilities, traffic accidents (WMS/WFS).
• Finnish Transport Agency  – Digiroad roads for routing and geocoding, railways, sea depth WMS and WFS of Finnish Transport Agency
• Finnish meteorological institute's open data service  – real-time weather observations, time series and forecasts.
• Geological survey of Finland HAKKU  – geological data (WMS/WFS) of Geological survey of Finland.
• National Board of Antiquities web site provides ancient sites registry, built heritage, built cultural environments and world heritage sites in Finland
• University of Jyväskylä, LIPAS  – Finnish sport facilities (WMS/WFS).

International spatial data services

Metadata services

• European commission, INSPIRE Geoportal
• ESA, Earth online
• USGS, Data catalogue
• European Environment Agency, Data and Maps – Natura areas, CORINE land cover, drainage basins, digital elevation model, data about water and air quality, etc.
• FAO spatial datasets
• Robin Wilson, free GIS Data – a very long list of open GIS data, also includes country-specific lists.
• Pangea – Open Access library aimed at archiving, publishing, and distributing georeferenced data from earth system research. PANGAEA also allows data to be published as supplements to science articles or as citable data collections in combination with data journals.

Data download services

General vector data

• OpenStreetMap – please be careful with the free data in Shape format. It does not include all the 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 data in pbf format.
• 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. 1:10 000 000 scale.
• EuroGeographics, EuroGlobalMap, 1:1 000 000 scale.
• GeoNames – place names.

Administrative borders

• Global Administrative Areas
• FAO, Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL), 1990 ->
• Eurostat, European administrative units / Statistical units, 2003->

Satellite images

• ESA:
  • Sentinel images. Sentinel2 images: resolution 10-60m, revisit time: 5 days, number of channels 12, available from Copernicus Open Access Hub. 2015 ->
    • Sentinel2 cloud-free 10-days mosaic, 120m, 2019.
  • PROBA-V, multispectral images for vegetation cover analysis. Resolution: 100-1000m, revisit time: 1-2 days. 2013 ->
• NASA/USGS:
  • Landsat, resolution: 15-120m, revisit time 8 days or more, 7-11 channels, 1972 ->
    • GLS, Global Land Survey, selection of Landsat images from years: 1975, 1990, 2000, 2005, and 2010.
  • MODIS provides continuous global coverage every one-to-two days, and collects data from 36 spectral bands. Resolution: 250-1000m. 1999 ->
  • EO-1, 10- to 30-meter multispectral and hyperspectral data, 2000-2017. Irregular capture times.
  • ASTER, resolution: 15, 30, 90m, 14 channels. Irregular capture times.
  • And many other thematic sensors.
  • These and other datasets can be downloaded from several services:
    • EarthExplorer, which also has EarthExplorer API
    • Earthdata Search, Earthdata API
• AWS Public Data Sets – Sentinel, Landsat, GLS, MODIS and more. Download of most images if for free for users, but for some (inc. Sentinel) download is on Requestor pays basis, ie downloading costs a little bit.​​​​​​​

Digital Elevation Models

• ESA, Copernicus DEM, 90m open to everybody, 30m global and 10m European DEM with restricted access, 2019
• ESA, EU-DEM, only Europe, 25m.
• JAXA, ALOS DEM, 30m.
• Jonathan de Ferranti DEM, 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 1'' (30m), 2000. 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.
• Giuseppe Amatulli, Geomorpho90m – global high-resolution geomorphometric layers, 100m, 3'' and 7''

Digital Elevation Models that include oceans

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

Land cover / vegetation

• ESRI, 10-Meter Land Cover, resolution: 10m, 2020.
• EEA, CORINE Land Cover, resolution: 100m ja 250m, 1990, 2000, 2006, 2012, 2018. Only Europe.
• FAO, Global Land Cover-SHARE, 2014, resolution: 30'' (1km).
• ESA, GlobCover, 2005-06 ja 2009, resolution: 300m.
• JRC, Global Land Cover 2000, resolution: 1km.
• GLAD datasets: Forest change, surface water dynamics, humid tropical forests, tree cover, bare ground, land change (1982-2016), forest monitoring, etc.
• 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, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020. resolution: 30''.
• 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.

Climate

• 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.

Others

• HELCOM Map and data Service, a lot of data about the Baltic Sea.
• CGIAR-CSI, Global Aridity and Potential Evapo-Transpiration database, resolution: 30''. 2019.
• FAO etc, Harmonized World Soil Database, resolution: 30''. Last updated in 2012.
• NASA, Soil Collections, several datasets.
• UNEP etc, World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).
• 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, OBIS, ORNIS, REMIB
• DLR, Global urban footprint. 2011-12. Open only for science and non-commercial purposes.
• GDELT event database. Updated continuously.