GeoData-Centre

GeoData-Centre

Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Institut für Geographie

Wetterkreuz 15
91058 Erlangen

A large part of the “flood of data”, often referred to as Big Data, refers in one form or another to a spatial situation on Earth. Against this background, “digital geography” is investigating the social consequences of the boom in geodata: How do these geodata change what we know about the world and how we act in the world? Which geodata is produced in which way — and which data may not? Who can use this data — and who may not?

With the GeoData-Centre at the Institute of Geography of the FAU in Erlangen, since May 2017 we are establishing a database infrastructure and data for teaching and research in the fields of cultural geography, physical geography and the digital humanities and social sciences in order to give them better access to ‘Big Geospatial Data’ .

Infrastructure of the GeoData-Centre

  • PostGIS database architecture with geodata from OpenStreetMap
  • ElasticSearch cluster with selected Twitter data
  • Virtual environments for Wikimapia and Wikidata

(1/2018)

Teaching at the GeoData-Centre

The infrastructure of the GeoData-Centre supports the training of methods in the fields of geodata analysis and visualisation, in particular in the study programmes of cultural geography in Erlangen and the interdisciplinary digital humanities and social sciences at FAU.

Research at the GeoData-Centre

The Geodata-Centre supports (geo-)data related research in (cultural) geography and related social sciences and cultural studies as well as stays of scientists and students at the Institute of Geography in order to work on their own research projects with the help of the infrastructure of the Geodata-Cdentre.

This support of the includes the provision of the server infrastructure and (geo)data as well as technical support in dealing with architecture and data structure.

Contact & organisation

Interested researchers and students may contact per Email:
Coordination:  &

Consultation: &

Student research assistant: Nils Oßwald