During this Open Data Week 2021 event, viewers learned about innovative sources and applications of open geospatial data at a global scale. Members of William & Mary’s AidData research lab and the geoLab discussed three sources of data aimed at empowering global insights leveraging geospatial information. Each of the following topics included a presentation and time for questions and discussion.‍

GeoQuery is a free tool from AidData that provides open source geospatial data in a simple and easy-to-use format. GeoQuery saves time and lowers the barrier to working with geospatial data by handling processing of large scale geospatial datasets. Our talk provides an introduction to how GeoQuery works and the 50+ datasets available for the entire world, as well as a demo of how GeoQuery can be used to visualize data and produce meaningful insights into geospatial trends. 

China does not publish a country-by-country breakdown of its international official finance activities. Nor does it publish project-level data. This talk covers how AidData assembled the most comprehensive and detailed source yet of project-level information on China’s global development footprint, covering 4,300 projects worth $350 billion between 2000-2014. We also preview changes in the types of information that will be available when AidData releases its next version of the dataset later this year that extends coverage to 2017. 

The geoBoundaries team in William & Mary’s geoLab works to collect and maintain one of the world’s largest open source, free and research-ready databases of political administrative boundaries. The geoBoundaries dataset currently tracks approximately 300,000 boundaries across 199 entities, including all 195 UN member states, Greenland, Taiwan, Niue, and Kosovo. In this talk, attendees learn more about how data for GeoBoundaries is collected and made freely available, as well as how GeoBoundaries is being used in numerous applications, including AidData’s GeoQuery platform. 

Event Speakers:

Seth Goodman, Data Engineer, Geospatial Data & Tools for Analysis, AidData

Soren Patterson, Communications Associate, AidData

Katherine Walsh, Program Manager, Transparent Development Footprints, AidData

Sydney Fuhrig, geoBoundaries Managing Director, geoLab at William & Mary