Links

GeoWise Limited provides the following links as a service to customers and persons evaluating InstantAtlas software. We do not endorse these and cannot be held responsible for inaccuracies in data or guarantee that they will work in our product. Nor are the comments below necessarily complete.

Important notice: Whilst many of these files are readily available on the internet and can often be used freely for non-commercial purposes, please check in each case on usage restrictions and citation requirements before publishing reports which include them.

Canada

http://geodepot.statcan.ca/Diss2006/DataProducts/BoundaryFiles_e.jsp
These Canadian files can be used for non-commercial use, though the files are often very large. If data is to be used for the whole of Canada, the shapefiles are not suitable for InstantAtlas or would need to be made smaller by generalization using G.I.S software. Alternatively, the data can be extracted (e.g. by province) for a more useable file size. Geographical projection: is not suitable for use with common web map services (WMS) or Google background mapping.

Germany

http://www.geodatenzentrum.de/geodaten/gdz_rahmen.gdz_div?gdz_spr=deu&gdz_akt_zeile=5&gdz_anz_zeile=0&gdz_user_id=0
Restrictions apply to use of these sample files. Generally the Kreis, Region, Land and National boundary files can be used for samples and non-commercial use. German government organizations may not be allowed to publish reports using this data source if they are obliged to obtain data from their respective Land Geo-Institutes. Copyright should be acknowledged.

Italy

http://www.istat.it/ambiente/cartografia/
Restrictions apply. Italian Office of Statistics makes the following layers available: Italy Regions, Provinces and Communes – and a separate NUTS2 layer. There does not appear to be a copyright though the origin “ISTAT” should be acknowledged. Projection used: ED_1950_UTM zona 32 is not suitable for use with common web map services (WMS) or Google background mapping.

United Kingdom

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/
Ordnance Survey provide some census boundaries e.g. output areas. Copyright should be acknowledged.

United States

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html
This US Census boundary file portal is the main source for US boundary data* at different administrative levels. These include: Census block groups, divisions and regions ; census tracts ; congressional districts; county and county subdivisions; metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas; school districts; states; state legislative districts; voting districts; 3-Digit and 5-digit ZIP code tabulation areas** . Different formats are available – be sure to pick “.shp” files - not (.e00 or ASCI) - for use with InstantAtlas. These are all un-projected shapefiles and hence suitable for use with common web map services (WMS) or Google background mapping.

* Multi-part polygons: Some administrative units in some states include multiple polygons. Where these have not been correctly merged into a “multi-part polygon” with unique ID, results in InstantAtlas will be unpredictable. In such cases, these should be edited first in a G.I.S. application.

** U.S. Zipcodes: ** U.S. Zipcodes: Census ZCTA's (Zip Code Tabulation Areas) from the above source are not the same as postal zip codes as designated by the U.S. Post Office. Reliable zip code boundaries can only be obtained at a cost. Two suppliers to consider: (1) http://www.maponics.com/products/gis-data/zip-code-boundaries/overview/or (2) http://zipboundary.com/

Other Countries

Austria: http://www.statistik.at/web_en/publications_services/geodata/index.html

Spain: http://centrodedescargas.cnig.es/CentroDescargas/equipamiento.do?method=mostrarEquipamiento

Switzerland: http://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/internet/swisstopo/en/home/products/freeproducts.html

Worldwide

http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/
A very good collection of Shapefiles for global maps with 2 administrative layers. Also raster layers in 3 scales available.

http://www.mapcruzin.com/download-free-arcgis-shapefiles.htm
A mixed selection of shapefiles for different parts of the world of differing qualities.

http://www.gadm.org/
Good site for administrative boundaries, often for harder-to-find countries. Quality is mixed. For water, rail and roads:http://www.diva-gis.org/gdata

http://www.vdstech.com/map_data.htm
Another good general source of geographical datasets.

http://download.geofabrik.de/
Digital geographical datasets generated out of the 'Planet File' which is a snapshot of the OpenStreetMap database.

http://gis.uchicago.edu/data.htm
Shapefiles and data for different countries and different topics

Demis Web Map Server in EPSG:4329 (WGS 84)
http://www.demis.nl/home/pages/wms/demiswms.htm
For use in InstantAtlas: http://www2.demis.nl/WMS/wms.ashx?wms=WorldMap

Blue Marble / Jet Propulsion Laboratory in EPSG:4329 (WGS 84)
http://onearth.jpl.nasa.gov/WK/bmng/
For use in InstantAtlas: http://wms.jpl.nasa.gov/wms.cgi?

http://www.edwardtufte.com
An internationally acknowledged guru in this field with several publications on the subject - his web site has some very useful and interesting discussions.

http://www.plainfigures.com
Specialist UK consultancy for delivering statistics in an understandable form - valuable resources list too.

http://stats.math.uni-augsburg.de/~unwin/AntonyArts/VisTechNTTS.html
General paper on visualisation techniques for statistics - useful references.

http://www.surfingwithed.org.uk/
A UK-based specialist, Ed Swires-Hennessy runs his own very useful web site with lots of valuable free information.

http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/
Michael Friendly's review of what's good and what's bad, Statistical Consulting Service and Psychology Department, York University.

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/images/Statistical%20Maps%20-%20Best%20Practice%20v5_tcm97-51126.pdf
Document about good practise in mapping from the Office for National Statistics

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/geography/staff/dorling_danny/index.html
Prof Danny Dorling, University of Sheffield.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~dcarr/
Professor Dan Carr, George Mason University.

http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/graphics.html
Useful list of references for graphical visualisation techniques.

http://www.agocg.ac.uk/visual.htm
Advisory group on computer graphics.

http://colorbrewer.org/
Useful site to help you define suitable colour schemes for your mapping applications.

http://designorati.com/cartography/news-13/2005/choropleth-mapping-in-the-news/
A general introduction article on choropleth maps.

http://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/
An online reference source for ZIP codes in the USA.

http://www.commondatahub.com/home
An online reference source for country and admin ISO codes

http://mapshaper.com/test/MapShaper.swf
A free online Shapefile generalising tool

http://instant-eyedropper.com/
Instant Eyedropper is a free software tool that will identify and automatically paste to the clipboard the HTML color code of any pixel on the screen with just a single mouse click.

http://www.webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker
This website provides a tool to check the contrast between your chosen foreground colour and background colour to see if they sufficiently meet accessibility requirements.

http://www.unece.org/stats/publications/metadata.pdf
International guidelines for statistical metadata on the Internet.

http://dublincore.org
International Dublin Core metadata standard.

http://www.sdmx.org
International initiative for statistical data and metadata exchange.