US city with best public GIS coverage available?

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02-22-2016 09:40 AM
MichaelGinzburg
Occasional Contributor II

Hello,

What US city has best publicly available GIS coverage?

Available either for download or as feature services?

Thanks in advance!

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8 Replies
DavidWasserman
Occasional Contributor III

Hi Michael,

I would say in my experience Florida's Geographic Library (FGDL) has been good for finding "Case Study Cities" and data in Florida. In terms of cities within Florida that have data that complements FGDL I would suggest potentially Orlando (which allows download of everything they have in one FGDB). Tampa also has a good data portal that can complement FGDL.  I can't speak to their GTFS data though because I have not looked at in a while, Florida is known for not having the best GTFS data in many areas...
New York City's open data portal is also good, and they also have their parcel data set for download for free now.
Can you specify what type of data generally you are looking for?

David

David Wasserman, AICP
MichaelGinzburg
Occasional Contributor II

Thanks David,

I'm looking for layers of buildings (incl. building use: school, government, etc.), streets (street width is important), open areas (parks, gardens, etc.).

If there a common standard for mapping/GIS information for local authorities in the US?

Given my DB structure - is it possible to make an ETL convertor which will work for all/majority of cities (with some tuning) - or every city will require its own set of conversion rules?

Thanks!

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DavidWasserman
Occasional Contributor III

Hi Michael,

The closest I have ever seen to a set data standard for the types of data you mentioned is FGDL mentioned above but that only gets to the statewide level (others have similar data bases for sure though). Most City Specific GIS Data is curated by local authorities that have similar needs, but minimal coordination not only in terms of a standard . A good example  I have encountered open parcel data sets like PLUTO in NYC that have a full set of land use attributes, building attributes, assessed value, and a multitude of rich attributes. At the same time, there exists parcel data sets that basically only have aspects of the geometry available for use in places like Monterey County. To answer your question, the diversity of data standards available for most useful city data is context specific and is not highly standardized. There are sources of City Specific Data that are standardized like TomTom, Points of Interest Databases, and even more open sources like Open Street Map that have some level of data standardization but they are more of the exception rather than the rule. Open Street Map might have the data you are looking for, but generally it sounds like you need a combination of well attributed street centerline data, parcels, and foot prints. Those datasets do exist I know for NYC (see their data portal), but I would suggest maybe seeing what Open Street Map can do on a larger scale too. Something that will be challenging is the street width you ask for (I wish I had that for my applications as well), and this is because the general disconnect that exists between surveyors in public works and those who manage street centerline data bases. Generally, cities do not record width information, but they include functional classification and other information (TomTom has lanes for major streets) that enable you to make incredibly rough inferences (get you orders of magnitude, nothing precise by a long shot). OSM sometimes has this data I have been told, but I have never saw it in a high enough quality or at a large scale before.  At the end the data, comprehensive data sets like those you want are very context specific at a national scale. While proprietary data sources have processed and collected a lot this data, easily available data requires cleaning and QAQC. It is hoped that as open data standards become more prominent that some level of coordination will start to coalesce, and also ideally down the line more and more cities will start drilling into the details of their assets a little further to get more data about things like streets.

I hope this helps Michael. I am sure others on Geonet would have a similar story or know it first hand for many of them are Municipal or County GIS Managers who deal with these coordination issues daily.

David

David Wasserman, AICP
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ChrisDonohue__GISP
MVP Alum

In regards to your question on standards, there is not a common standard for cities in the United States.  Every city has its own way of doing things and has set up GIS differently.  There has been some movement towards more common methodology, with local and regional initiatives for data sharing and pragmatic movements towards "standardized" schema like the ESRI Local Government Information Model (LGIM), but there is no widespread standard.

Chris Donohue, GISP

NickHetrick
Occasional Contributor II

King County, WA has a open data portal that has a lot of GIS data that covers many cities in the county and its free for download.  KCGIS Data Download

AndrewMartinez4
New Contributor III

NMRGIS - New Mexico's Data Clearing house

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DavidWasserman
Occasional Contributor III

At this rate we might have a link for every state.
Get Data - NM RGIS

NM warehouse is pretty intense. Thanks Andrew. http://rgis.unm.edu/getdata/

David Wasserman, AICP
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AdrianWelsh
MVP Honored Contributor

Just adding to the masses... UDOT (Utah Dept of Transportation) has a great Open Data portal where you can get nearly all of their data in an easy-to-use fashion. It is great for non-GIS users:

Home | UDOT Open Data