Spatial Data Collections

Available Data Sources

National & International Data

• US Census Bureau TIGER/Line Data
• NASA Earth Observation Data
• USGS Earth Explorer
• World Bank Open Data
• United Nations Data
• NOAA Climate Data
• OpenStreetMap Data

Regional & Local Data

• Chicago Data Portal
• Cook County GIS Data
• Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
• Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) Data Hub

Specialized Collections

• Historical Maps and Imagery
• Demographic and Socioeconomic Data
• Environmental and Climate Data
• Transportation Networks
• Land Use and Land Cover

Access Methods

Direct Download

• Publicly available datasets
• No authentication required
• Regularly updated

Restricted Access

• Licensed datasets (requires UChicago affiliation)
• Data available through the UChicago Library
• Special access arrangements for sensitive data

Web Services

• WMS/WMTS/WFS services
• REST APIs
• GeoJSON endpoints

Data Formats

• Vector: GeoJSON, Shapefile, KML, GeoPackage
• Raster: GeoTIFF, NetCDF, HDF
• Tabular: CSV, Excel (with geocoding support)
• Web: Vector Tiles, 3D Tiles

Data Processing Tools

• QGIS with Processing Toolbox
• ArcGIS Pro Analysis Tools
• Python (GeoPandas, Rasterio)
• R (sf, terra packages)
• Google Earth Engine

Best Practices

1. Always check data licenses and use restrictions
2. Document data sources and processing steps
3. Maintain data provenance
4. Consider coordinate reference systems
5. Validate and clean data before analysis

Getting Help

• Data discovery assistance
• Format conversion
• Data cleaning and preparation
• Custom data extraction

Training Resources

• Data acquisition workshops
• Data management best practices
• Working with big geospatial data
• Reproducible research with spatial data

Request Custom Data

Need specific data for your research? Our team can help you:

• Identify appropriate data sources
• Acquire licensed datasets
• Process and prepare data for analysis
• Develop custom data pipelines