Log in to like this post! Finding geospatial data for xamWebMap [Infragistics] Devin Rader / Monday, January 19, 2009 The xamWebMap control which we released with our last Silverlight data visualization CTP uses a popular file format called Shapefiles as its source for geo-spatial shape data. A Shapefile actually consists of a several different individual files, includes a .shp file which actually contains the shape polygons and a .dbf file which contains data associated with each polygon. We chose to use Shapefiles as our primary shape data source because of the popularity of the format and because there are so many free sources of Shapefiles available on the Internet. The list below includes links to a variety of sources of free Shapefiles you can use with the xamWebMap. World CDC – Boundary files for all seven continents http://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/shape.htm Intact Forests http://www.intactforests.org/download/shp_download.htm Various types of data http://finder.geocommons.com/ Various World and Continental shapes http://www.vdstech.com/map_data.htm North America NWS GIS – AWIPS Shapefile Database http://www.weather.gov/geodata/ NWS – Weather data http://www.weather.gov/gis/shapepage.htm National Atlas http://www.nationalatlas.gov/atlasftp.html US Census http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/index.html North American Transportation Atlas http://www.bts.gov/publications/north_american_transportation_atlas_data/ South America Amazon mapping of ecological systems http://www.natureserve.org/aboutUs/latinamerica/gis_data_downloads.jsp Hydrologic data http://edc.usgs.gov/products/elevation/gtopo30/hydro/samerica.html Africa Southern Africa Humanitarian and Disaster GIS Library http://www.sahims.net/gis/Gis%20Input/zambia_gis.asp Southern Africa Human Development Initiative http://www.sahims.net/gis/GIS%20input/GIS_Library_Regional.asp Europe EEA Reference grids http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/metadetails.asp?id=760 CloudMade OpenStreetMap http://downloads.cloudmade.com/ Asia Central Asia Rivers http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/mckinney/Central_Asia_Data/rivers.htm Former Soviet Union Data http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-104/fsucoal/html/metadata.htm Australia Australian Spatial Data Directory http://asdd.ga.gov.au/ This list is just a sample of some places where shapefiles can be found, and of course there a a bunch of utilities out there that let you convert from other formats like KML and DWG to the shapefile format . If you find good sources of shapefiles, let me know and I will add them to the list.