GIS and Mapping

Data collected from on-going U.S. Census Bureau surveys. American Community Survey is published more frequently than the decennial census, and has a higher level of detail, but it represents a smaller sample of the total U.S. population.

American FactFinder has been decommissioned and is no longer available. Data are now available at: data.census.gov.

Includes downloadable population, housing, and economic data (among others) from the Census Bureau's ongoing surveys — including the American Community Survey.

"Data Driven Detroit (D3) provides accessible, high-quality information and analysis to drive informed decision-making." Data includes business, civic engagement, demographic, education, environment, land use, public safety, and transportation data. Data can be downloaded as shapefiles, KML, or CSV.

Remote sensing data for a specified geographic area. Multiple scenes and time periods are available for many locations. Includes: Global Land Survey (GLS) Landsat images, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), Digital Orthophoto Quadrangle (DOQs), Earth Observing One (EO-1) multispectral and hyperspectral data, ISRO Resourcesat 1 and Resourcesat 2, Landsat Archives, ObrView 3, Sentinel 2, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation data.
NOTE: requires free USGS account to download data.

In mid-2018, Google launched its dataset search. If you don't know where to look for a dataset, try this.

Datasets are available for boundaries, demographics, environment, public health, transportation, etc. Formats include ESRI shapefile, KML, spreadsheet, etc.

Mosaic includes surviving historical European census data files in a harmonized format as well as historical European administrative boundary shapefiles.

Easy access to summary tables and time series of population, housing, agriculture, and economic data, along with GIS-compatible boundary files, for 1790 through the present and for all levels of U.S. census geography, including states, counties, tracts, and blocks.

The geographic information available from The National Map includes orthoimagery (aerial photographs), elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover.

Includes a multitude of datasets: National Boundary Dataset, National Elevation Dataset, National Hydrography Dataset, National Land Cover Database, National Transportation Dataset, and much more.

Datasets including socioeconomic disadvantage and affluence, walkability, crime, land use, recreational centers, libraries, fast food, climate, healthcare, housing, public transit, and more. Data available at multiple levels of spatial scale, from county to census tract to block group.

Shapefiles of the world, including individual countries, states, communities, railroads, airports, parks, physical features, raster imagery, and much more.

Data from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments. Includes boundary, economic, land, and transportation data as well as aerial photography and elevation contours.

Police traffic stop data is available from this site for select locations across the United States (including Michigan State Police). It is standardized to be able to make direct comparisons between locations, despite having been collected from various sources. In addition to providing access to the raw data, the site also provides scholarly analysis of the data as well as tutorials for how to use it for your own research.

Data from the National Interagency Fire Center. Includes feature layers that can be imported into a GIS.