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

 

Finnish spatial data

• National Land Survey's Map window can be used to view maps and browse geographic information.
• Paikkatietohakemisto metadata search can be used to search for information about spatial data sets and geographic information services

 

• AVAA Portal
  • PaITuli, data from several governmental organizations and from Finnish researchers.
  • Open Street Map web services: WMS, WMTS, WFS and TMS.
• 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 or has not been properly updated after 2017.
  • 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
  • Web services, inc: background maps WMS and place names WFS
• Finnish environmental administration (SYKE) Open data service provides a lot of datasets about Finnish environment. WMS/WFS
  • 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 (WMS/WFS):
  • 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. WMS and WFS
  • 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. WMS and WFS.
  • 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. WMS and WFS.
• Agency for Rural Affairs, fields register WMS. Registration is required. Check Paituli for field plots dataset.

 

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, Earth online
• 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.

 

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).
• 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.
• 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.
• 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, 2018.
• 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.
• Eurostat, Administrative units / Statistical units, 2003-2016. Several map scales, from 1:1 000 000. Only Europe.

 

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 ->
  • PROBA-V, multispectral images for vegetation cover analysis. Resolution: 100-1000m, revisit time: 1-2 days. 2013 -> Open access to images older than 1 month, from here.
• 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 ja 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. Unregular capture times.
  • ASTER, resolution: 15, 30, 90m, 14 channels. Unregular capture times.
  • And many other thematic sensors.
  • These and other datasets can be downloaded from several services:
    • EarthExplorer, which also has API
    • Earthdata Search, 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.

Satellite mosaics:

• JRC, Image2000, CORINE land cover project's satellite image mosaic.

Digital Elevation Models

• ESA, EU-DEM, only Europe, 25m.
• JAXA, ALOS DEM, 30m, 2018.
• 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 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. 

 

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, GlobCover, 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: 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'.
• 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).
• 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
• DLR, Global urban footprint. 2011-12. Open only for science and non-commercial purposes.
• GDELT event database. Updated continuously.