[Live-demo] What common datasets do we need?

[Hamish]

Hi all,

so that we don't all individually reinvent 27 wheels using our own
custom datasets, to start with let's take inventory of what we already
have in the way of common datasets on the v4.5 disc:


- natural earth shapefiles, + pre-loaded into PostGIS.  (global coverage)
- natural earth raster DEM, 1:50M global relief         (global coverage)
- OpenStreetMap extract of the host city, +pre-loaded into PostGIS.
     (host city coverage)

some apps also install general use geodata into ~/data/:
- a couple small Barcelona kmz files
- udig ships some nice shapefiles + geo-jpeg rasters for general use
- in the raster dir, what appears to be 3-band LANDSAT (no metadata!),
   and SRTM elevation data, both for Barcelona (2010 host city)

-AND-

- one month ago I added support for the OSGeo Geodata project's North
   Carolina sample dataset. It includes shapefiles, geotiffs, and KML
   files mainly focusing on & around Hood County (bus routes, etc),
   but also some maps at the State level to put those in context.
  It's worth noting that this dataset was put together a few years ago
  by osgeo people with the expressed purpose of being used as a sample
  dataset for all OSGeo projects.. contact geodata at lists.osgeo.org
  All licensed in the clear of course. see the links below for details
  about the different vector, satellite, etc layers provided.
  ~100mb total.

trunk/bin/install_gisdata.sh:
[...]
#################################################
#   TODO:  decide to ship the NC data or not.   #
#################################################
# Download the North Carolina sample dataset
#  contact: geodata at lists dot osgeo.org
# about: http://www.grassbook.org/data_menu3rd.php
# license: Creative Commons
# metadata index: http://www.grassbook.org/ncexternal/nc_datalist.html

# grab shapefiles, geotiffs, and KMLs (~100mb total)
FILES="shape rast_geotiff kml"
BASE_URL="http://grass.osgeo.org/sampledata/north_carolina"

cd "$TMP"
mkdir nc_data && cd nc_data
for FILE in $FILES ; do
   wget -N --progress=dot:mega "$BASE_URL/nc_$FILE.tar.gz""
done

#and install them ...
mkdir -p "$DATA_FOLDER/north_carolina"
cd "$DATA_FOLDER/north_carolina"
for FILE in $FILES ; do
   mkdir -p $FILE
   cd $FILE
   tar xzf "$TMP/nc_data/nc_$FILE.tar.gz"
   cd ..
done




it seems to me that for tutorials & such we require:

  - a global coastline etc (natural earth layers)     (done)
  - OSM data for the host city, + some KML POIs       (done)
  - multiband LANDSAT and SRTM rasters for host city  (done)
  ^^^ all the above host city data symlinked to unchanging filenames
  - a rich city/county scale dataset with .SHPs and geotiffs (propose NC)
  - a dataset support team (osgeo's geodata committee seems like a
     no-brainer to maintain/coordinate it all...)


regards,
Hamish