Spatial Data

Source: ESA

Here’s a list with some resources for spatial data that I have used in my research.

Nightlights

VIIRS (since 2012) https://ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/viirs/download_dnb_composites.html
DMSP-OLS (1992-2013) https://ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/dmsp/downloadV4composites.html

Geocoded Surveys

Afrobarometer https://www.afrobarometer.org/
Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) https://dhsprogram.com/
World Bank LSMS http://surveys.worldbank.org/lsms/about-lsms

Geographic Variables

Ruggedness https://diegopuga.org/data/rugged/
Caloric Suitability Index https://ozak.github.io/Caloric-Suitability-Index/
Elevation (NASA) https://cgiarcsi.community/data/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-database-v4-1/
Land Cover http://maps.elie.ucl.ac.be/CCI/viewer/index.php
Precipitation and Temperature http://chelsa-climate.org/downloads/
Malaria Ecology Index from the paper Kiszewski et al (2004) shared by Gordon McCord https://gps.ucsd.edu/_files/faculty/mccord/mccord_research_malaria-index.zip

Country Shapes (including Admin-1 and -2)

Population Grid

Worldpop https://www.worldpop.org/doi/10.5258/SOTON/WP00004
UNEP Sioux Falls https://na.unep.net/siouxfalls/datasets/datalist.php

Cities

https://www.africapolis.org

Ethnic Maps Africa

Murdock Maps http://worldmap.harvard.edu/data/geonode:Murdock_EA_2011_vkZ
GREG http://worldmap.harvard.edu/data/geonode:GREG_0vV

Conflict Data

Uppsala Conflict Data Program https://ucdp.uu.se/
Acled https://www.acleddata.com/
Ethnic Power Relations (ETH) https://icr.ethz.ch/data/epr/

Satellite Imagery

Google Earth Engine https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/
Sentinel 2 (ESA) https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions/sentinel-2
Landsat (USGS) https://www.usgs.gov/land-resources/nli/landsat/landsat-data-access?qt-science_support_page_related_con=0#qt-science_support_page_related_con

Landcover Grids < 30m

Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) https://ghsl.jrc.ec.europa.eu/download.php
Global Urban Footprint (GUF) https://www.dlr.de/eoc/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-11725/20508_read-47944/
ESA African land cover https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2017/10/African_land_cover
NASA Cropland https://earthdata.nasa.gov/esds/competitive-programs/measures/gcad30-through-landsat-and-modis
Facebook, CIESIN & World Bank High Resolution Settlement Layer https://ciesin.columbia.edu/data/hrsl/

Resources and Mining

USGS https://mrdata.usgs.gov/
World Resources Institute https://www.wri.org/resources

Further Data Collections

WorldGeoDatasets http://www.worldgeodatasets.com/basemaps/index.html
AIDDATA https://www.aiddata.org/datasets
PCA https://platform.princetonclimate.com/PCA_Platform/index.html
data|in|space https://datainspace.org/
Free GIS data https://freegisdata.rtwilson.com/
UPenn GIS Global https://guides.library.upenn.edu/globalgis
GDELT https://www.gdeltproject.org/data.html

Software

R is a wonderful programming language for data manipulation and statistical programming. R is also extremely powerful when it comes to spatial data. The main packages for GIS in R to get familiar with are sp for vectorized representations of spatial data and raster for spatial grids. The sf package is certainly also worth mentioning and can be considered a new and improved version of sp. But there are many more useful packages and their number is constantly growing. Here are some links to tutorials to get you started with GIS in R: