[postgis-users] Request for open postgis datasets

Paul Ramsey pramsey at refractions.net
Mon Jul 11 16:03:23 PDT 2005


Sorry Chip, I have no pre-existing data, only references to useful  
places to go for information.
You can download shape files of all the countries, states, etc from  
obvious places on the web. PostGIS has a shp2pgsql tool to convert them.
You can download some large tables of place names, do google searches  
on the term "GNIS" (stands for geographical names information system  
and is surprisingly common).  The US versions of these are text, but  
it is a 10 line perl script to convert them to loadable spatial SQL.
The USA TIGER data includes some good placenames information embedded  
in it, but it is a lot of work to process.
Paul

On 11-Jul-05, at 3:55 PM, Chip Masters wrote:

> PostGIS Users,
>
> With help from several of you, I've gotten PostGIS
> 1.0.1 + PostgreSQL 8.0.3 + GEOS 2.1.2 + Proj 4.4.9 up
> and running, and I've ran the OGC compliance tests
> provided in the postgis distrubution. Now I need some
> data to continue my integration work, and I was hoping
> that some of you may know where I can find, or can
> even provide me with, some data that I can use. First,
> let me explain a little about what I'm trying to do w/
> PostGIS:
>
> I work at Cycorp (http://www.cyc.com) which is the
> company Doug Lenat founded in 1997 to further the Cyc
> project, which he began at MCC back in c. 1985. I
> expect some of you have heard of Cyc before, but if
> not, our website has a nice overview of our main
> goals.
>
> I am the lead developer at Cycorp for our efforts to
> build a geospatial ontology in our knowledge base and
> to 'spatially enable' Cyc by connecting it to spatial
> databases which it can use as a backend for storing,
> querying, and manipulating spatial data. We decided to
> do our main research using PostGIS because of its OGC
> compliance and because we already have a lot of good
> experience working with PostgreSQL.
>
> Now that I've got PostGIS running and have read the
> SFS, I am ready to begin testing our translations of
> CycL queries into SQL92 With Geometry Types queries,
> but I need useful datasets. The OGC compliance dataset
> is a start, but what I'd really like is general data
> about real places. For instance, if anyone had a
> PostGIS database of polygons for all the countries of
> the world, or all the states in the Union, this would
> be ideal. Alternatively, I know where to find
> shapefile data for such things, but I don't know of a
> straightforward way to translate shapefiles into OGC
> SFS compliant data. Does anyone know of tools for
> converting shapefiles?
>
> Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
>
> Chip Masters
>
>
> P.S. Just so this interaction isn't just one-way with
> you guys helping me out, if any PostGIS developers
> have an interest in, or need for geographic ontologies
> (in OWL-Full format), please let me know and I'll see
> if we can get a little informal collaboration going.
> My project is very small, and cannot fund any
> development outside our SOW, but I can certainly
> devote some of my own time to providing some examples
> of the types of ontologies we're producing under this project.
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Sell on Yahoo! Auctions – no fees. Bid on great items.
> http://auctions.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-users mailing list
> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>




More information about the postgis-users mailing list