If you are researcher, student, project manager, engineer, environmentalist, humanitarian worker, GIS analyst, urban planner, geologist, Mapper, navigator or any person trying to work with geodata of Nepal, finding the reliable data is always may have been the major problem. This blog will help you to get the reliable GIS data in Nepal.
1. Survey department is the one and only mapping agency of Nepal which has been preparing, updating, storing and distributing the spatial data of Nepal. As a national mapping agency, Survey department provides following data at various scale from 1:25000 to 1:1000000.
- All levels of Administrative Data
- Topographical Base Data/maps
- Admin boundary(line/polygon)
- Transportation(line/polygon)
- Hydrography(line/polygon)
- Place names/settlements (point)
- landcover(polygon)
- Utility(point/line/polygon)
- Contour/topographical(point/line)
- Soil Data
- Phogrammetric Images
- Some thematic maps etc…
2. Survey department through its National clearing house portal provides the metadata about all kind of spatial data .Administrative data (except ward boundry) and topographical data of 1:1000000 are freely downlodable via http://nationalgeoportal.gov.np. For the data with cost, one should visit the GIID office at Survey Department with documents specified in citizen charter. e-payment and delivery hasnot started yet.
You can also plan your data need via (http://nationalgeoportal.gov.np/#/geoapps )
3. Digital cadastral database of Nepal was archived by Department of Land Information and Archive (DoLIA) with weblink (http://dolia.gov.np) which is now part of the survey department. As cadastral information is sensative and related to personal information, special permission from MOLRM is required stating the logical reason for data need and use. Survey Department via Cadastral Division provides the digital cadastral data with Rs. 5 per parcel.
4. All the geodetic control points( 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,GPS,Laplace) and Bench Mark are provided by the Geodetic division of Survey Department as per the norms of the division.
Updated list of products and price can be found in http://dos.gov.np/products-and-services
5. National land use project under Nepal Government is continuously preparing and disseminating land use data to data user according to its norms and procedure. Land use data of Nepal is available in two categories/level.
- District level land use data
- present land use data
- land resource data
- profile
- VDC level (before the formation of local units) land use data
- Present land use data
- Soil data
- land capability data
- Profile
More information about Land use data and acquisition procedure is available at Official website of National Landuse project (http://nlup.gov.np) or you can directly visit NLUP office.
6. Geological data of Nepal is not available at survey department. Geological data of Nepal is available at Department of Mines and Geology. more at (https://www.dmgnepal.gov.np) and (http://gis.dmgnepal.gov.np)
7. Department of Urban Development and Building Construction(DUDBC) (http://www.dudbc.gov.np/) under its GIS and Statists section creates and can provide the base data/some GIS data and reports of
- Municipalities
- Sub-metropolitan city
- Metropolitan city
- Town development committee
- New Towns
- Smart cities of Nepal.
If you require GIS data of large scale (i.e. 1:2500, 1:5000), DUDBC is the most reliable source of data. You need to go DUDBC office located at Babarmahal, Kathmandu with application, valid id and upon payment of assigned price of data, data can be available within few hour.
8. Other source of reliable GIS data could be
- Nepal Red Cross Society all VCA Data: https://data.humdata.org/group/npl
- Open Street Maps and HDX Data Portal: https://data.humdata.org/group/npl and https://www.openstreetmap.org/
- World bank data portal: https://geonepal.info/
- Nepal gov DRR Portal: http://drrportal.gov.np/
- Central bureau of statistics (http://cbs.gov.np )
- DRM portal of Ministry of Home Affairs (http://drm.moha.gov.np/ )
- Regional database system of ICIMOD (http://rds.icimod.org )
- National planning commission portal (https://www.npc.gov.np , https://opendata.klldev.org )
9. Geo-referenced topo-sheet of Nepal can also be found at http://pahar.in/category/maps/nepal-related-maps