Assignment 5 - Data Sources Search Results and Documentation
Xiandeng Yi
Dataset One
Monthly and annual average latitude tilt GIS data at 40km resolution for China from
NREL
1. Description: Provide information on the solar resource potential for the data domain. The
insolation values represent the average solar energy available to a flat plate collector,
such as a photovoltaic panel, oriented due south at an angle from horizontal equal to the
latitude of the collector location.
2. Created By: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
3. URL: http://en.openei.org/datasets/node/660
4. Publication Date: April 12th, 2005;
5. Time Period: Presumed accurate as of October 30th, 2007 (the last update date)
6. Data Format: Shapefile
7. Source Scale: Not documented. However, it does indicate that “these data provide
monthly average and annual average daily total solar resource averaged over surface cells
of approximately 40 km by 40 km in size.”.
8. Key Attribute Information: No easy-to-use pdf or txt file is found. Only a rdf file is
available, but I am not able to open it. The attribute table (from my guess) features 12
months, annual, latitude, longitude, perimeter etc.
9. Map:
Dataset Two
Global Land Cover 2000 – China
1. Description: This dataset provides a landcover map of CHINA with the Spot Vegetation
data.
2. Created By: Institute of Remote Sensing Application (IRSA), Chinese Academy of
Sciences,
3. URL: http://bioval.jrc.ec.europa.eu/products/glc2000/products.php
4. Publication Date: 12/01/2002
5. Time Period: Starts from 1-1-2000 to 31-12-2000
6. Data Format: Raster
7. Source Scale: Not documented. However, it gives “Spatial Resolution:1km at Equator
(0.00892857dd)”
8. Key Attribute Information: very clear and detailed, features include swamp, farmland,
glacier, etc. and their responding data and color.
9. Map:
Dataset Three
River data from Geospatial Toolkit GIS data for China from NREL
1. Description: This dataset consists of a whole set of data. Here I just chose the river data
which shows a map of rivers in China.
2. Created By: NREL and its partners (more information is not available. However, there
is a SBX file and RDF file which might consist of more metadata, but I cannot open them)
3. URL: http://en.openei.org/datasets/node/660
4. Publication Date: October 31st, 2005
5. Time Period: presumed as of July 06th, 2012 (the latest update)
6. Data Format: Shapefile
7. Source Scale: N/A May be in the RDF or SBX files
8. Key Attribute Information: only partly guessed from shortened spellings like rivers’
location, length, type etc. Metadata may be in the RDF or SBX files.
9. Map:
Dataset Four
China Wind 50m Resolution
1. Description: This dataset illustrates the annual average wind resource potential for the
southeast area of China at a 50 meter height. It can be used to evaluate wind energy
development in China.
2. Created By: TrueWind Solutions/NREL
3. URL:
<http://www.nrel.gov/gis/cfm/data/GIS_Data_Technology_Specific/International/Wind/
High_Resolution/China_Wind_High_Resolution.zip>
4. Publication Date: November, 2003
5. Time Period: N/A
6. Data Format: vector digital data
7. Source Scale: N/A
8. Key Attribute Information:
It has a very detailed metadata file, but attribute description is technically abstract. The
first column is the presumably the area (only southeastern China), and the following
column may be variables defining the density and direction of the wind.
Bounding_Coordinates:
West_Bounding_Coordinate: 114.843203
East_Bounding_Coordinate: 121.082229
North_Bounding_Coordinate: 28.168093
South_Bounding_Coordinate: 22.662223
Entity_and_Attribute_Information:
Detailed_Description:
Entity_Type:
Entity_Type_Label: cn_se_50mwind
Attribute:
Attribute_Label: FID
Attribute_Definition: Internal feature number.
Attribute_Definition_Source: ESRI
Attribute_Domain_Values:
Unrepresentable_Domain:
Sequential unique whole numbers that are automatically generated.
Attribute:
Attribute_Label: Shape
Attribute_Definition: Feature geometry.
Attribute_Definition_Source: ESRI
Attribute_Domain_Values:
Unrepresentable_Domain: Coordinates defining the features.
Attribute:
Attribute_Label: ID
Attribute:
Attribute_Label: GRIDCODE
9. Map: