Data: Anybody Need World Port Index (WPI) Data?
WPI data is contained in my world map as an important data layer. In fact, some of my island maps posted here contain an anchor (my symbol for a port) along with the name. I do not make full use of the information contained within the WPI. My projects contain the name of the port plotted per the port's assigned lat/lon. Some of you might require more in-depth information on the ports. The US government pub you need is WPI Pub-150.
The World Port Index (Pub 150) publication contains the location, characteristics, known facilities, and available services of major ports, shipping facilities and oil terminals throughout the world (approximately 64,000 entries). The data in this publication is mostly tabular and new editions are published bi-annually. This publication is available in its entirety on the website and there are also database queries available for all of the port information contained within.
This pub is freely available at the Maritime Safety Information web page.
I am a map data hound. I scour the web to find FREE information. In another life, I used to sell repackaged US government data. It amazed me that smart people would pay good money for free information. However, after spending 15-years in the information industry I know now that "time is money". The entrepreneur repackages the free information in a useful format so that the end-user saves time (money). It costs less money (time) than the time (money) one would have to spend to compile their own database.
So, if you would like, there are a number of companies that will gladly sell you WPI data. They probably will charge you handsomely. Or you could follow the above link, download the WPI Access data, load it into MS Access, export the WPI data as an MS Excel file and then create a text file that can be loaded into your mapping program (or maybe your program handles MS Access or MS Excel). It all sounds so easy to me, but I do appreciate the difficulty some of you might have. If you require a map-ready file (shp), drop me a comment with your email address and I'll fix you up.
OT: Data
thanks for the tip.. you are correct about resellers of free data. Man, case in point, simply look at the gisdatadepot. That entire portal is designed around serving up and reselling a boatload of freely available data. What's even worse is that the data is old, not supported, no metadata provided, etc... it's a crime that people actually pay these idiots for their data. Add to that, someone once told me that they make more than $200,000 a year simply reselling freely available data.
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Anonymous |
5/16/2006 10:23:00 AM