Geoportti Research Infrastructure (RI)

Geoportti Research Infrastructure (RI) is a shared service for researchers, teachers and students using geospatial data and geocomputing tools. Geoportti RI helps the researchers in Finland to use, to refine, to preserve, and to share their geospatial resources.

  1. Provide scientists’ easy access to massive geospatial data and geocomputing resources at centralized high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud infrasturcture
  2. Promote extensive use of geographical data and geoinformatics methods in research and university education
  3. Catalyze innovations of geospatial data technology and applications broadly in society

The list of Geoportti RI services, how to acknowledge them (how to cite), and their terms of use


Geoportti RI Scientific Advisory Board

Prof. Shaowen Wang (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)

Prof. Anahid Basiri (University of Glasgow, UK)

Prof. Lars Bernard (University of Dresden, Germany

Prof. Benjamin Burkhard (Leibniz University Hannover, Germany)


Geoportti RI Consortium Members

Prof. Juha Oksanen

Prof. Niina Käyhkö

Dr. Jussi Nikander

Prof. Alfred Colpaert

Dr. Sirpa Thessler

Dr. Saku Anttila

Dr. Pekka Lehtovuori

Dr. Tanja Välisalo


Geoportti RI History

Geoportti RI 2.0 is an ongoing project to construct a next generation Open geospatial information infrastructure for research. The project received funding from the Academy of Finland in the FIRI 2021 call for a three-year period 2022-24. 

Formerly known as oGIIR – Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research – the site was set up in 2017, receiving funds for its development from the Academy of Finland for funding period 2016-2019.


Geoportti RI services and their terms of use

Service types


A

Services fully established and maintained by Geoportti RI.


B

Services established and maintained by Geoportti RI to bring significant added value to third-party services, such as national/global SDI services or CSC. 


C

Third-party services that are not produced, but educated and promoted by Geoportti RI in the geographical information science context.


Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


B

Paituli provides spatial datasets that are important for research and education or are provided by Finnish researchers.

  • All datasets have an open license, but vary in details depending on the data provider.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geospatial data provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

Paituli STAC catalog includes Finnish data, currently about 100 datasets. The full list is available in STAC browser for Paituli STAC, see what data collections are available, search for items and also preview COG files.

  • All datasets have an open license, but vary in details depending on the data provider.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geospatial data provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

GeoCubes Finland is a harmonised multi-resolution raster geodata repository on the cloud.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the GeoCubes service provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

The Geoprivacy platform is a service where cyclists and pedestrians can donate GPS tracking data for science. Additionally, the portal offers an open data repository to which users can choose to provide a privacy-protected version of their data.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the Geoprivacy platform service provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

Geoprivacy Open Data is an anonymised tracking dataset in gpx format based on voluntary donations of personal human mobility data.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the Geoprivacy platform service provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

CSC hosts spatial data in both Puhti and Allas computing environments.

  • All datasets have an open license, which varies slightly depending on the data provider.
  • For accessing data in Puhti, terms of use: https://research.csc.fi/general-terms-of-use
  • Data in Allas is free and open for all.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geospatial data provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A-C

Geodata Catalogue, download and API services

  • Mostly free and open for all use.
  • Dedicated licenses available under each external service.

Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


A

Guides, best practices, scripts, data, and other resources where Geoportti services have been used.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the Geoportti code sharing service provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland and Geoportti consortium members.”

B

Students and personnel of Finnish universities have possibility to share their own spatial data via Paituli. It could be data that has been gathered for a scientific study or a course project. This data could be about Finland or any other region in the world.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the GeoCubes service provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

C

CSC Allas is an object storage system for storing data during the lifetime of a project.


C

OKM Fairdata services are for storing and sharing research data, mainly for final results, for any field of science. Fairdata services enable verifiable and reproducible science and secure preservation of digital research outputs.

  • The Fairdata services are available to the research community in accordance with the applicable use policy.
  • The services are free of charge for the organisations and users, as defined in the agreement between the Ministry of Education and Culture of Finland (“Minedu”) and CSC, and in the service: https://www.fairdata.fi/en/terms-and-policies

Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


A

UEF Drone Lab can provide services for research institutions, providing state of the art mission planning, efficient data acquisition, data analysis and interpretation.

  • Installing ODM on cPouta (link).
  • Installing WebODM on cPouta (link).
  • Installing WebODM on Windows (10 & 11) (link)
  • For more information, contact alfred.colpaert(at)uef.fi or timo.kumpula(at)uef.fi.

A

NLS FGI Geovisualisation and Extended Reality lab in the Finnish technological hub in Otaniemi for setting up versatile visualization configurations for effectively conveying geographic information to users.

  • For more information, contact juha.oksanen(at)nls.fi or pyry.kettunen(at)nls.fi.

Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


A

Puhti has several GIS software packages preinstalled. The environment is ready for computing, just log in and start working!

  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geocomputing resources provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

CSC has several computing resources that are available for universities and research institutes. For the geospatial community the most relevant ones are the supercomputer Puhti and the cloud computing environment. Longer introduction of using these computing resources for GIS can be found from CSC pages.


A

There are numerous country-wide datasets available on Puhti local storage for fast and efficient access.

  • All datasets have an open license, which varies slightly depending on the data provider.
    For accessing data in Puhti, terms of use: https://research.csc.fi/general-terms-of-use
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geospatial data provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

A listing of geospatial software and libraries. Many are available in Puhti.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the tools acquired via the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Academy of Finland.”

C

LUMI, an HPE Cray EX system, has a sustained computing power of 380 petaflops (HPL, High-Performance Linpack) in its final configuration. Several geospatial libraries are installed in the system.

  • Accessible by LUMI consortium countries and researchers and companies in European countries. More info.

Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


C

A cloud infrastructure to create virtual machines with admin rights. Virtual machines can be used for example to set up servers to serve geospatial data via OGC APIs over the internet.


A

Instructions on how to install GeoServer on a virtual machine.


A

Instructions on how to install and access PostGIS on a virtual machine.


A

Instructions on how to install OpenDroneMap on a virtual machine with Docker.


A

Instructions on how to run ArcPy scripts on a virtual machine.


C

Rahti is container cloud, where users can deploy different web services with containers.


Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


B

Instructions and tips for teachers on how to utilize geocomputing resources in teaching.

  • The access is restricted to teachers working in higher education institutions in Finland.
  • The repository requires a login to access. If you wish to gain access and share your organizations education materials or know more about the collaboration please contact: geoportti(at)utu.fi

A

In this course you will learn the basics of geocomputing on a supercomputer through a combination of lectures and hands-on activities. 

  • Open and free for all use.

A

This guide aims to help researchers to work with Earth Observation data using CSC’s computing resources.

  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geospatial data provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

CSC organizes courses and webinars on various topics, including geospatial analysis.

  • Webinars free and open for all.
  • Courses open to anyone, with a small fee.
  • Training materials free and open to all.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of geocomputing platform provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

Various self-study courses and learning material packages developed by the Geoportti RI.

  • Mostly free and open for all use.
  • Dedicated licenses available under each external service.

A

On-line self-assessment surveys on various topics. After finishing a survey you can compare your results to the average and download a summary pdf.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • For creating own self assessment surveys, please contact us.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the Skills Assessment tool provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

C

The Location Innovation Hub (LIH) is a centre of excellence in location information coordinated by the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute. EDIH LIH services are produced in conjunction with a partner network. EDIH LIH helps companies grow their business with location information. EDIH LIH also serves the public sector.


Service

Type

Description

Terms of use


A

The main HUB to discover all the Geoportti RI services.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the data/information/services provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

Guides, best practices, scripts, data, and other resources where Geoportti services have been used.

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the data/instructions provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

A

To offer news, please contact us here: Contact

  • Open and free for all use.
  • Acknowledge: “We made use of the information provided by the Open Geospatial Information Infrastructure for Research (Geoportti, urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072513) funded by the Research Council of Finland, CSC – IT Center for Science, and other Geoportti consortium members.”

B

To ask for a presentation, please see our Contact page.

  • Pricing as agreed.

A

List of relevant networks for Geoportti RI.

  • Open and free for all use.

Service types


A

Services fully established and maintained by Geoportti RI.


B

Services established and maintained by Geoportti RI to bring significant added value to third-party services, such as national/global SDI services or CSC. 


C

Third-party services that are not produced, but educated and promoted by Geoportti RI in the geographical information science context.