We have built Maphubs as a open repository to help people find and use GIS data.

The accessibility of GIS data is a big problem. A lot of the data is buried and hard to work with. That is why we built Maphubs (https://maphubs.com) as an open source Github-like repository for open/public map data. We have a lot of data loaded already including data from OpenStreetMap, but we are looking for volunteers to help us find data hiding in all the corners of the internet and buried in government portals.

I recently encountered an unreachable (or extremely challenging to reach) dataset. I grew up on a military base and there was this one section of our backyard where the grass just wouldn’t grow… I didn’t think much of it until one day people starting coming and taking samples. It turns out my yard was an EPA Superfund site with old underground storage takes leaking oil. Exciting!

I was looking for the data to make a map. First, there are a couple of things to learn 1) the EPA divides most of its data into regions so you have to combine it to get a national dataset, and 2) Superfund sites are actually in what is called the National Priorities List (NPL). Once I learned that I had more luck searching for “NPL” instead of “Superfund”.

I eventually figured out that the only place to get EPA GIS data is their “Clip N Ship” application (https://edg.epa.gov/clipship/) Sounds easy, but the problem is it is an older Adobe Flash application that freezes or crashes all the browsers I have on my Mac (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.) Maybe if I found an old PC and tried installing old versions of Flash, I would have eventually got it to work, but at this point I was already an hour into my search. Instead I eventually found the data on this site http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/ in tabular form with lat/lng fields and converted it back to a GIS format using QGIS.

I now have that data in Maphubs http://maphubs.com/layer/info/164/US-EPA-National-Priorities-List-Superfund-Sites-with-CIESIN-Modifications-v2-2014# and I’ve added it to a map with military areas from OpenStreetMap.

Anyone can login and start making maps like this one. We are hoping that Maphubs will help make GIS data accessible to more people. It is 100% open source and will always be free for public data.