CyberFaCES

An important decision faced at the start of any geospatial project (from making a basic map to advanced spatial analysis) is whether the project requires original data collected in the field or digitized from maps or can make use of pre-existing data captured by others (e.g., colleagues or online sources). For example, vector data for natural features, political boundaries, transportation networks, etc., already exist somewhere on the web and don’t need to be created from scratch. Many vector datasets are freely available on government or open-source websites, while some specialized datasets are sold as commodities. Open access datasets can vary widely by quality and accuracy depending on the methods used to create them, as well as by how much preprocessing and filtering is required to render them useful. It is therefore important to explore the data carefully to see if they will meet your needs.