LIDAR

The new Bruce Hornsby album has a song called LIDAR for all the geographers out there.

Lyrics are all about 3D mapping and open data sets - a little niche :)

Scanning forest canopies, evidence to be found
They're free online in the public domain
Mapping truth, learning skills, through the laze

Big fan of Bruce since 1986, and seen him live three times in that time on his rare trips to the UK...

How to access Environment Agency Geomatics Survey Data

Free GIS datasets

One issue with using GIS is finding the right data.

Robin Wilson has created a useful list of free datasets to browse through, along with a caveat about the quality of the data they contain.
This was an issue when we worked on training courses for ESRI about five years ago, and is still an issue, although organisations like English Nature and the ONS are now more open with their data.

Open Supermarket Data

Tracking twitter while having a writing day, and in came a tweet about some new data on supermarket locations, at the GeoLytix blog.
This hasn't previously been available as open data rather than commercially provided.

I downloaded it as an XLS and then converted it to CSV and split it into the different supermarket chains so that it can be viewed in ArcGIS Online - locations were using Postcodes for the time being, although other location options are available.
Here's the location of ALDI stories....

And here's a heatmap showing where ASDA stores are found in parts of the north of England...

Plenty of possible options now for exploring this data and looking at retail locations, demographics etc. plus supermarket location activities.

Thanks to @Geolytix for sharing the data