GIS

The US Census Bureau has wonderful shapefiles of all the US states and counties available – they’re referred to as TIGER/Line files. Some files are nation-based, some are state-based, and others have county-based data, but most have some combination of two. Every shapefile has an associated GEOID which can be used to link the US Census demographic data. (Check American Fact Finder to locate these datasets – they can be very specific, so match your GEOID carefully!) These shapefiles have myriad uses for essentially all kinds of demographic mapping. Bonus – shapefiles of all the US territories are available, too. The date range of the data is 1992-2019, but the data is more detailed on census years. If you’re looking for ready-made shapefiles of any US area, this is a fantastic place to look.

The USGS has its own collection of ready-made GIS-friendly datasets, which are neatly organized on this site. They’re filterable by topic (i.e. climate change, minerals, water bodies, etc), location (US states and territories), and year (2009 to 2019). Data is presented both spatially and geographically. These are fantastic datasets, easy to use and excellently cited with great metadata, but there are only 245 total datasets. The topics are quite specific, and if they don’t have what you’re looking for, it can be quite disappointing. They’re constantly adding more, though, so keep checking back if you don't find what you're looking for at first.

The website summarizes its best use itself: this site is a great source of data suitable for making small-scale maps (1:10, 1:50, and 1:110m), without having to sift through confusing or poorly-attributed data usually available for free on the web. Both vector and raster map data is available, so you can choose what best suits your purposes! Natural Earth is public domain map data of the world ready-formatted for use in GIS programs. Most have associated attributes with feature names and have neat linework, but the maps are compiled by volunteers, so your mileage may vary. The data is free for use in all types of projects, and no credit is necessary (at the authors’ insistence). Go forth, small-scale mappers!

OpenTopography is sponsored by the University of California, San Diego, Arizona State University, and UNAVCO. It’s a great resource for obtaining extremely high-resolution topographic data collected with lidar. Hillshade and point cloud images are available as rasters. Be advised, these data files are very large, as you’d expect from most rasters, but the upside is that you can view them in Google Earth if you’d prefer. Downsides: the data is heavily US-centric (with a small pocket clustered in New Zealand). Check out their “Getting Started” link at the top if you need a refresher on lidar or tips on downloading their data to Google Earth or ArcGIS.

For those looking for demographic data to apply to maps for region or country comparison, nothing beats the World Bank! It’s got extensive data on almost any topic you can think of, from Agriculture & Rural Development to Urban Development. Note that these datasets are country-specific, so states/provinces/counties can’t be pulled out individually, but this is still a fantastic source for demographic datasets (they come in Excel, CSV, or XML format when downloaded, so you’ll need to link it to a map you’ve made). You can view graphs of global and country progress on almost every dataset over time, dating back to 1961.

American Fact Finder is the data exploration tool of US Census Data. These datasets are connectable to the Tiger/Line Shapefiles by GEOID, drawing from American Community Survey, American Housing Survey, Annual Economic Surveys, Annual Surveys of Governments, Census of Governments, the Decennial Census, the Economic Census, Equal Employment Opportunity Tabulation, Population Estimates Program, and the Puerto Rico Community Survey. Search by Community Facts, or use the Guided Search (I highly recommend this!) to be directed to the data that suits what you’re looking for (i.e. people, housing, businesses, etc.) The Download Center is where you’ll want to head when you’ve located the set you want to look at – downloads are a bit weird and may take a while, but leave it for a bit and it’s always come through for me.

Another great source for demographic data, the CIA World Factbook offers background information and datasets on the Geography, People and Society, Government, Economy, Energy, Communications, Transportation, Military and Security, and Transnational Issues of a country. Countries are ranked in order for myriad categories, but I would recommend using the site only for background information, as their files are not available for download. Check it out and explore – it’s a good place to brainstorm project ideas, as well!

This is your source for all the EU-related data that you could ever dream of! There are 13 subject categories to browse, and over 13,000 datasets to choose from in every topic imaginable. This data is usually finer-scale than data you could find on other sites (individual provinces, cities, etc.) Demographic and environmental categories are logical to check out, but GIS can be applied to almost every topic area. All of these datasets are downloadable, in many forms, and most have wonderful underlying metadata.

The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe, or INSPIRE, is collecting EU spatial information for informing EU environmental policies and activities (think the EPA in the US). There aren’t data downloads specifically available on this site, but this is an important project to be aware of when searching for EU data on other sites. All their data falls into one or more of 34 Data Specification themes, and you can view all their data schema, which are good guides to follow for your own data management.