We provide assistance with several categories of data, and work to collect and maintain various datasets.
Ocean State Spatial Database
The Ocean State Spatial Database (OSSDB) is a freely accessible geodatabase created by the GeoData@SciLi team, for conducting basic, contemporary geographic analysis and thematic mapping within the State of Rhode Island. It contains geographic features and data compiled from several public sources. A subset of the Census Bureau's TIGER/LINE water features were used to create a base map of coastal water, which was used to clip and create land-based areas for census geographies including counties, county subdivisions, census tracts, and ZCTAs. Census data from the 2020 Census and American Community Survey (ACS) are stored in tables that can be easily related to geographic features. Point data for public facilities like schools, libraries, and hospitals were gathered from several state and federal agencies and transformed into spatial data. The database is packaged in two formats (SQLite / Spatialite and ESRI File Geodatabase) which can be used in QGIS and ArcGIS Pro.
Proprietary Datasets
The library has acquired many proprietary datasets over time, and we are currently working on moving them onto a platform where users can access them. Until then, current students, faculty, and staff at Brown can contact us for extracts. Examples of datasets we own:
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