FAO agro-informatic data catalog

The Geospatial Unit publishes its data through the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) corporate platform for geospatial data documentation and dissemination managed by the Agro-Informatics team.

The FAO Agro-Informatic Data Catalog (previously known as GeoNetwork or the FAO Map Catalog) is a free, open-source web catalogue application for managing spatially referenced datasets. It is designed to harmonize and improve access to FAO's spatial databases to support decision-makers and promote multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development.

In the last thirty years, the volume of raw and processed geospatial information has grown exponentially, alongside the technical capacity to acquire, process, analyse, display and manage the information. However, these developments have not been always matched by the users’ ability to access and use the data. Addressing this shortcoming is crucial, given that the value of information largely depends on the users’ ability to find and use it. FAO has recently concentrated its efforts on improving dynamic and standardized access to its geospatial assets, and those generated by and hosted by organizations and institutions worldwide.

The FAO Agro-Informatic Data Catalog is one of the world’s largest repositories of national, regional and global thematic datasets. Each dataset has its own Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards complaint metadata, and many datasets are accessible dynamically via Web Map Service (WMS). This web catalogue application allows the management of spatially referenced resources. It is designed to harmonize and improve access to FAO's spatial databases to support decision-makers and promote multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development. Its main features are: 

• publishing and describing resources using the online metadata editing tools;
• searching geospatial data across multiple catalogues, with text or spatial queries;
• making dynamic maps through a map viewer ; and
• harvesting metadata to and from external repositories.

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