California Launches New Geodata Portal

One of the themes we discuss in the book The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data is the increasing number of geodata portals that host maps and services from government agencies, from local to global.  While some say that the increased Internet search capabilities are rendering some of these portals obsolete, they remain a very helpful way for data users to access geospatial information.  Web-based data portals began appearing during the 1990s and continue to be created today, as evidenced by the recent announcement of a new data portal for California.  California, though its Cal-Atlas clearinghouse, has been providing geospatial information to the community for many years.  Indeed, it has always been one of the best examples of a state data clearinghouse that is rich in content.

The recent announcement revealed that California launched a new geospatial data portal, http://portal.gis.ca.gov/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page.  I have been experimenting with this new portal and it does contain several new features that I believe data users will appreciate, including the “footprint” on a map indicating the extent of coverage for each layer.  A map viewer also exists, but I was unsuccessful finding many appropriate layers via this method.  The announcement hints that more agencies contribute to the new portal, thus increasing potential content.  I hope that is the case, because for me and many other data users, while better interfaces are certainly welcomed, the most important thing is always the amount of content hosted on the site.  Furthermore, data portals and their searching and browsing capabilities are only as effective as the richness of the metadata that are associated with them.  Like any data portal, this one takes some getting used to, but given the number of agencies using and hosting geospatial data in California, this is a good one to keep an eye on to see what develops.

New California State Data Portal