Joint CIG/ISPRS Conference on Geomatics for Disasters and Risk Management: Free Spatial Data in Canada

I just spent two days at a remarkable conference in Toronto.  The conference was a joint effort of the Canadian Institute of Geomatics and the ISPRS.  It was very well attended, primarily by Canadians,  but with with wide representation from all over the world, especially China.   If you are interested in disaster management, there were over a hundred presentations and poster sessions on this subject.

The Canadian Institute of Geomatics, one of the organizers of the event is quite a remarkable organization.  It has over 1000 members and subscribers worldwide and this year is celebrating its 125th anniversary.  Its executive director is Jean Thie, a pioneer in so many aspects of geomatics, who among many other things was responsible for implementing the world's first operational geographic information system (GIS), the Canadian Geographic Information System (CGIS), when he was with the Canadian Land Inventory (CLI).  If I remember, it was implemented on an IBM360 in 360 Assembler.  The Canada Land Inventory was designed in the late 1960's and implemented between 1967 and 1977.  In its lifetime over 15,000 capability maps were produced and it remains one of the largest digital sources of multi-disciplinary information for most of the settled portion of Canada, an area of approximately 2.5 million sq km.  This Federal-Provincial Inventory Program was a massive undertaking especially given the computing tools available at the time it was developed and was the reason for the development of CGIS.  The CLI is available online Canadian Land Inventory at the Geogratis web site of Natural Resources Canada.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) Geogratis

On the subject of geospatial data in Canada, a remarkable event occurred in April of this year.   As of April 1st 2007, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has changed the way that Digital Topographic Data (DTD) can be accessed.  NRCan is making its existing DTD products available through the Geogratis Web Portal and users now have no fee access to DTD products, commercial licenses will no longer be required, and users have rights for unlimited use and royalty free distribution of the data through a single unrestricted use license agreement.

Canadian Council on Geomatics (CCOG) Geobase

Another source of quality Canadian geospatial information is the CCOG's Geobase Portal. a federal, provincial, territorial and municipal government initiative funded for the most part by the GeoConnections program.  The goal of the initiative was to provide

    * Quality geospatial data (current, accurate, consistent and maintained)
    * Unique geospatial data (one data, collected once and maintained closest to the source)
    * Data at no cost and with no restrictions for users

The Geobase site has the following data:

    * Geopolitical Boundaries
    * Digital Elevation Data
    * Geodetic Network
    * Data Alignment Layer
    * Geographical Names
    * National Road Network

Effectively, this means that in Canada most government geospatial data is now available at no cost and with an unrestricted license.  What a milestone !  I know my friend Giulio Maffini and many others in Canada will feel highly gratified, though Giulio would have preferred that this would have happened 20 years ago.