Funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation, and with support from Massachusetts Open Cloud, the Center for Geographic Analysis(CGA) at Harvard developed a “big geodata”, remotely hosted, real-time-updated dataset which is a prototype for a new data type hosted outside Dataverse which supports streaming updates, and is accessed via an API. The CGA developed 1) the software and hardware platform to support interactive exploration of a billion spatio-temporal objects, nicknamed the "BOP" (billion object platform) 2) an API to provide query access to the archive from Dataverse 3) client-side tools for querying/visualizing the contents of the archive and extracting data subsets. This project is currently no longer active. For more information please see: http://gis.harvard.edu/services/project-consultation/project-resume/billion-object-platform-bop. “Geotweets” are tweets containing a GPS coordinate from the originating device. Currently 1-2% of tweets are geotweets, about 8 million per day. The CGA has been harvesting geotweets since 2012.

These data sets were created as part of The Center for International Development’s ongoing research into the role of geography in economic development (see www.cid.harvard.edu/economic.htm). They have been created between 1998 and 1999.

Wildlands in New England is the first U.S. study to map and characterize within one region all conserved lands that, by design, allow natural processes to unfold with no active management or intervention. These “forever wild lands” include federal Wilderness areas along with diverse public and private natural areas and reserves. Knowing the precise locations of Wildlands, their characteristics, and their protection status is important as both a baseline for advancing conservation initiatives and an urgent call to action for supporting nature and society. Wildlands play a unique role in the integrated approach to conservation and land planning advanced by the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities (WWF&C) initiative, which calls for: at least 70 percent of the region to be protected forest; Wildlands to occupy at least 10 percent of the land; and all existing farmland to be permanently conserved. This research was conducted by WWF&C partners Harvard Forest (Harvard University), Highstead Foundation, and Northeast Wilderness Trust, in collaboration with over one hundred conservation organizations and municipal, state, and federal agencies. This dataset contains the Geographical Information System (GIS) polygon layer of Wildlands created by this project and used in all analyses for the 2023 report. Another GIS layer will be updated as new Wildlands are brought to our attention or created and will be available at https://wildlandsandwoodlands.org/ for researchers.

Take a looks at the Harvard Map Collection's interactive exhibit 'Embellishing the Map,' which explores the myriad varieties and uses of embellishments found on the library's extraordinary collection of maps.This exhibition presents maps chosen from the Harvard Map Collection that display how European cartographers, mainly from the Low Countries of the 16th and 17th centuries, embellished maps with a variety of illustrative, non-cartographic elements. With echoes of the classical world’s anxiety of the “horror vacuii” (fear of empty spaces), the uncharted and unknown spaces are populated with sea creatures and animals, from the mythic and fantastic to the zoologically accurate, and many varieties of ships plying the open seas. All in their natural habitat, which is to say located on the land and seas of the map, not as artistic embellishments in cartouches or title panels (something for another exhibition, perhaps). The sources for the cartographic fauna run the gamut from classical sources (the histories of Herodotus and Pliny the Elder), Medieval bestiaries and compendiums of the natural world (Hortus Sanitatis), to accounts from the ever peripatetic explorers. The maps are presented in loosely geographic order, beginning (where everything begins) with the heavens, then, after a medieval view of the known world, moves from the Western Hemisphere eastward to the Pacific Ocean. Besides the few modern, more thematic maps that have been included for contrast, chronologically this exhibition effectively ends before the ascendancy of the Royally sponsored French cartographers of the 18th century. The maps of Delisle, Bellin, d’Anville and the distinguished Cassini dynasty migrate the sea creatures, animals and ships to the pages and articles of Diederot’s grand Encyclopedia. What now is presented on the map reflects the science of cartography and measurement reigning supreme, not alas (as seen in the 1541 map “Tabula noua partis Africae”), a King riding a bridled Sea Carp!

Harvard CGA 2018 Datafest Presentation on Dataverse and WorldMap

It is about updating to GIS information database, Decision Support Tool (DST) in collaboration with IWMI. With the support of the Fish for Livelihoods field team and IPs (MFF, BRAC Myanmar, PACT Myanmar, and KMSS) staff, collection of Global Positioning System GPS location data for year-1 (2019-20) 1,167 SSA farmer ponds, and year-2 (2020-21) 1,485 SSA farmer ponds were completed with different GPS mobile applications: My GPS Coordinates, GPS Status & Toolbox, GPS Essentials, Smart GPS Coordinates Locator and GPS Coordinates. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model that integrates climate change analysis with water availability will provide an important tool informing decisions on scaling pond adoption. It can also contribute to a Decision Support Tool to better target pond scaling. GIS Data also contribute to identify the location point of the F4L SSA farmers ponds on the Myanmar Map by fiscal year from 1 to 5.

The GIS data maintained by HPPM includes information on buildings and grounds related to Harvard University. Our "standard" base layers are available to Harvard affiliates and their service providers (for example, architects) working on Harvard projects in AutoCAD DWG, ESRI SHP or File Geodatabase format. Additional datasets are sometimes available by special arrangement. http://home.hppm.harvard.edu/pages/gis-data-layers

Since 1908, the Harvard Forest has conducted forest surveys approximately every 10-20 years on its three largest tracts (total 1033 ha). These maps have been digitized along with maps of environmental factors (topography, soils), disturbance (1938 hurricane, historical land-use), and silvicultural treatments. These datalayers will allow researchers to understand the influence of environment factors, disturbances, and silviculture on the structure and composition of modern forest stands as well as assisting in locating and describing research sites. The dataset also includes an elevation grid (NED 30 meter cells), and a shapefile of linear features (trails, stonewalls, etc). Original maps were transcribed to standardized basemaps by various researchers. These basemaps were then scanned and digitized as shapefiles in ArcView GIS 3.2. The shapefiles were then transformed to Massachusetts State Plane Meters NAD83 projection in ArcGIS and rubbersheeted to align better with aerial photographs downloaded from MassGIS. Locations of control points will be permanently archived at the Harvard Forest to facilitate transformation of future datalayers.

The First International Workshop on Historical GIS was held on Aug 23rd - 24th, 2001 at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. The Workshop was hosted by the Center for Historical Geographical Studies at Fudan, and organized by: Jianxiong GE (Fudan University), Peter Bol (Harvard University), Ruth Mostern (U.C. Berkeley) , and Lex Berman (Harvard University). RELATED WEBSITE: https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/pages/agendas/shanghai_2001.html

AfricaMap is housed at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University with an initial grant from the Harvard Provosts Fund for Innovative Computing and ongoing support from the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, the Department of African and African American Studies and the Committee for African Studies at Harvard University. AfricaMap grew out of a project, called Baobab, funded by the Seaver Institute.AfricaMap is powered by World Map. WorldMap allows anyone to:Upload layers overlay them with thousands of other layersCreate and edit maps and link map features to media contentPublish data to the world or to just a few collaboratorsExport data to standard interoperable formatsMake use of online cartographic tools for symbolizing layersGeoreference paper maps online using the Map Warper Tool

GIS-based language maps, showing distribution of polygons based on centroid for each language by group.

This dataset contains elevation, 1986 forest type, land-use history, and soils maps for the Prospect Hill Tract, digitized from paper maps in the Harvard Forest Archives. File format = Idrisi 4.1 binary. Resolution = 10m x 10m. Coordinates = UTM zone 18. Datum = 1927 North American. This dataset has been replaced with a new vector series for the entire Harvard Forest (see HF110).

GIS Layers used to create the hunting habitat model, which include Cattle density, Distance from edge, Dominant landcover, Forest edge density, Forest patch size, Improved pasture patch size, Landcover, and Percent forest cover. Area of analysis defined by Minimum Convex Polygons created from Florida panther GPS data.

Take a looks at the Harvard Map Collection's interactive exhibit 'Manuscript Maps,' which explores the library's extraordinary collection of hand-drawn manuscript maps.Behind every manuscript map lies an individual’s hand. Unlike printed maps, where a combination of drafting, engraving, and printing distances particular sheets from the people who produced them, manuscript maps carry the pressure and movement of individual bodies. The weight of these individual bodies interweave the stories of individuals with the material lives of the maps themselves. In a nautical chart made of the Fiji islands, we can follow the path of the ship Sally to see the human cost of a short boom in the Sandalwood trade; in a draft of a map of US railroad systems, we can imagine a cartographer’s frustrations when we see the demands a never-satisfied author has made in the margins; in a survey of the property of the late Philip Wheeler in Rehoboth, Massachusetts, we can feel the cold of a New England day in late December on the surveyor’s hands as he divided the land for Wheeler’s wife and heirs. Each map invites you into the world—as big as the earth or as small as a backyard—that someone laid out by hand.These stories often begin before ink was put to paper and have continued long after that ink has dried. Most of these maps rely on previous models, whether someone has traced, copied, transferred, or improved that original map. As individuals trace, copy, and amend the maps in front of them, they graft their own lives into stories of their maps. As murky as their origins can be, their futures are no clearer. When, after all, is a manuscript finished? We would struggle to distinguish a line or a legend added a day, a week, a month, maybe even a year after the initial marks on a map from two hundred years ago. These manuscripts point to a moment in a story that radiates into both past and future.These hazy beginnings and endings invite us into the ongoing life stories of these manuscripts as we discover the many lives that touch them.

StoryMap theme consistent with Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health Communications standards

For more information about this data please see: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/

MBTA bus yards (point layer)

The datasets presented here enable historical longitudinal studies of micro-level geographic factors in a rural setting. These types of datasets are new, as historical demography studies have generally failed to properly include the micro-level geographic factors. Our datasets describe the geography over five Swedish rural parishes and a geocoded population (at the property unit level) for this area for the time period 1813-1914. The population is a subset of the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD). The geographic information includes the following feature types: property units, wetlands, buildings, roads and railroads. The property units and wetlands are stored in object-lifeline time representations (information about creation, changes and ends of objects are recorded in time), whereas the other feature types are stored as snapshots in time. Thus, the datasets present one of the first opportunities to study historical spatio-temporal patterns at the micro-level.

This dashboard is part of SDGs Today. Please see sdgstoday.orgPromoting well-being is one of the key targets of Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations. Many governments worldwide are incorporating subjective well-being (SWB) indicators to complement traditional objective and economic metrics. Our Twitter Sentiment Geographical Index (TSGI) can provide a high granularity monitor of well-being worldwide.This dataset is a joint effort of the Sustainable Urbanization Lab at MIT and Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard.

Archive containing all V5 Layers in ESRI Shapefile format. Please select either GBK or UTF8 encoded versions. For more information about this data please see: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/data/chgis/downloads/v5/about/