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GEOS270 2021W1

Helpful Data Sources

Here are are a few place you can look for data. There are plenty other out there, if you search google.

  1. Sources We’ve Worked With
    1. Simply Analytics
    2. Google Earth Engine
    3. Data BC
  2. Sources We Haven’t Worked With
    1. Municipal Data Sources
    2. BC Raster Data

Sources We’ve Worked With

Simply Analytics

With Simply Analytics, you can download Cenus Data for Canada and/or the United States. You can also download buissines locations.

Google Earth Engine

Google Earth Engine has lots of datasets, we’ve only covered two; using Landsat8 to calculate NDVI and and working with DEMs (see code below). If you’d like to work with something we haven’t worked with I’m happy to help facilitate downloading it, just send me an email. Do not wait until the last minute to contact me asking for help with a download.

  • This code can be used to download a DEM from google earth, similar to what we did in Module 2, just make sure to upload an appropriate boundary file first.
var dataset = ee.ImageCollection('NRCan/CDEM').mean();
var elevation = dataset.select('elevation');
var elevationVis = {
  min: -50.0,
  max: 1500.0,
  palette: ['0905ff', 'ffefc4', 'ffffff'],
};


Map.centerObject(Boundary)
Map.addLayer(Boundary)
Map.addLayer(elevation, elevationVis, 'Elevation');

// Export to Google drive
Export.image.toDrive({
  image: elevation,
  description: 'DEM',
  scale: 25,
  region: Boundary
});

Data BC

Data BC has many different datasetes. You can search for them by key terms. Some useful data sets might include:

  • Old Growth Forests - legal - current
  • Freshwater Atlas Stream Network
  • Freshwater Atlas Rivers
  • Freshwater Atlas Coastlines
  • BC Wildfire Fire Centres

  • Fire Burn Severity - Historical

  • Some downloads from this site require you to filter by Map sheets

Sources We Haven’t Worked With

Municipal Data Sources

The City of Vancouver Data Portal has a lots of data for the city: parks, zoning, bike lanes, transit etc. Only for the City Vancouver. Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby, etc. have their own. Metro-Vancouver, which is inclusive of all thse cities has more data. Most large municipalities have some sort of data portal.

  • eg. Google: “Toronto open data” and see what comes up.

BC Raster Data

Hectares BC has a large stockpile of raster dataset for the province. Sometimes students have trouble with downloads from this site. If your download won’t process, feel free to reach out. Just don’t wait till the last minute.