MySQL GIS – Part 3

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What data is available?

GEO data is expensive to create, so has been created by governments.  In the past governments charged for this data.  In 1980 the USGS was charging $300 (usd) per county for Oklahoma GEO data. (I complained to my congressman.) Today, a quick Internet search turns up lots of free GIS data.

I was hoping to find a neat collection of basic GEO data.   It would be nice if there was one place you could get world political borders (Polygons), postal codes (Polygons) and  points of interest like hospitals and airports.  What you can find is lots of  lists, often collections of odd data created for a virility of complex political purpose.  For example, The Global Change Master Directory is a large list of data sources on earth and climate change, but you will not find the data here.

Remember, as you dig for data there are two types Vector (text) and Raster (pictures).  Most sites don’t  distinguish between them or combine them for you making them less useful your your own uses.

If you find good sources of GEO data PLEASE share them with me so I can share them with everyone else.

Here is a short list of the sites I found and used to create my test data in my series of posts.

• www.cloudmade.com – has shape files for the entire world with administrative, natural, coastline, water and points of interest.  The data some from Open Street Maps and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
• data.geocomm.com -
• gisdata.blogspot.com – Public domain GIS data and Free GIS data repositories and clearinghouses.
• collinssoftware.com – http://www.collinssoftware.com/freegis_by_region.htm
• census.gov/geo/www/tiger – http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/index.html
• http://www.hostip.info/dl/index.html

I live in the state of Oklahoma. Because I know it well, I’m using it for my examples.  My search for Oklahoma GIS data turned up these sources. This should give you some idea of the data you might find in your searching. I found county borders (polygons), a list of hospitals (points), city borders (polygons),  points of interest (points) and zip codes (polygons).   Each of these came as shape files so the process was simple to get the data into MySQL.

• libremap.org/data/state/oklahoma/ – View the entire list of USGS Oklahoma Digital Raster Graphic Maps
• geo.ou.edu – County Boundary, Municipal Boundaries, Voting Precincts, School Districts, State House Districts, State Senate Districts
• tin.er.usgs.gov/geology/state/ – Oklahoma geologic map data
• okmaps.onenet.net – 25 digital-map data sets, known as the Digital Atlas of Oklahoma

Adding these to my ‘geo’ database was simple.  I ran each .shp file through the ogr2ogr program.

 wget http://www.okladot.state.ok.us/hqdiv/p-r-div/maps/shp-files/munibnd.zip
 unzip munibnd.zip
 ogr2ogr -f "MySQL" MySQL:"geo,user=root,host=localhost,password=" -nln oklahoma_cities -lco engine=MYISAM munibnd.shp

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