GIS and Data Resources

Downloadable data for world climate conditions

Access to SHAPE and TIFF files of elevation, vegetation, land cover, land use, transportation, drainage systems, boundaries and population centers. Requires free registration.

Provided by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to support humanitarian operations globally; contain information about administrative boundaries, populated places, transportaion network and more for many countries around the world

Geographic data extracts from OpenStreetMap including buildings, landuse, places, roads, waterways and more, available in SHP files

The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International contains Census Microdata for Social and Economic Research

Data of administrative areas, inland water, roads, railroads, elevation, landcover, and population for the nations of the world

Download shapefiles, geodatabases, KMZ files, and spatial dataframes (R) for each nation of the world.

The GeoNames geographical database covers all countries and contains over eight million placenames that are available for download free of charge.