Geoinformatics

CSC provides comprehensive services for doing research with spatial data – finding, downloading, analyzing and publishing data. We also offer training and expert support to help researchers succeed.

Data

Paituli data service includes a lot of Finnish spatial data for downloading or usage via APIs. Paituli is open to everybody.
Plenty of Finnish spatial datasets are also locally available at CSC servers for fast access from the computing environment. See the full list in Docs CSC: Spatial data in CSC computing environment (Puhti & Allas).
Paituli STAC enables fast search of Finnish raster datasets from Paituli, Geoportti Geocubes, FMI Tuulituhohaukka catalog and additionally some Finnish Sentinel 2 images.
Finnish universities and research institutes can publish their own data in Paituli and Fairdata IDA.
Allas is a data storage service for active projects with large storage quotas. Geospatial tools have good support for working with such cloud storages. For details, see Docs CSC: Using geospatial files directly from public repositories and S3 storage services.
Pukki is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) and supports also PostGIS extension for spatial data.
If you are looking for input data for your analysis, Geoportti web pages provide a long list of national and international spatial data providers.

Tools

CSC administrates the ESRI ArcGIS software consortium for Finnish universities (until 31.12.2025).
Docs CSC: Geoinformatics tools on CSC supercomputers.
Geocomputing on the supercomputer course materials describe the scripting (R, Python, bash) and parallel computing support of different geoinformatics tools.
If unsure which tools to use for spatial data analysis, please refer to the recommended geospatial tools list at the Geoportti website.

Computing services

CSC’s high-performance computing services can be used for spatial data analysis when the computing power of your local workstation is not enough. See the Geocomputing page for more details.
CSC’s sensitive data services are suitable for working with sensitive spatial data. At the moment, the tool selection is rather limited, but do not hesitate to request more via CSC Service Desk.
Noppe is an excellent service for organizing courses. It enables doing exercises in a web-based environment with Jupyter/VSCode for Python and RStudio for R.

Skills development

CSC organizes geoinformatics events. For upcoming events, see our training calendar.
Docs CSC contains Geoinformatics tutorials, including guides on Earth Observation (EO), working with spatial data in Allas, virtual rasters, etc.
CSC is a Geospatial Challenge Camp mentor.
The Library of Open Educational Resources includes learning materials from any science field by Finnish academia, including geoinformatics. It also allows publishing own materials.

Contact

CSC geoinformatics specialists are best contacted via our Service Desk. CSC also has two mailing lists for geoinformatics users. You are welcome to join!

gis mailing list for notifications about Paituli, GIS courses and events, and other general topics, mainly targeted for universities.
gis-hpc mailing list for geocomputing users of our supercomputers.

CSC geoinformatics services are a part of Geoportti infrastructure and have got significant funding also from Research Council of Finland.