Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) is Pennsylvania's official public access geospatial information clearinghouse. PASDA serves as Pennsylvania's node on the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). PASDA is a cooperative effort of the Pennsylvania Geospatial Technologies Office of the Office of Information Technology and the Pennsylvania State University Institute of Energy and the Environment.
Early history
Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA), the official public geospatial data clearinghouse for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania marked its 18th year in 2014. PASDA, which has grown from a small website offering 35 data sets in 1996 to the expansive user-centered data clearinghouse that it is today, has become a staple of the GIS community in Pennsylvania. PASDA provides access to thousands of data files, terabytes of data, and hundreds of Internet Map Services, Google Earth KML files, metadata, mapping applications, and other information like guides and tutorials.
PASDA was developed by the Pennsylvania State University as a service to the citizens, governments, and businesses of the Commonwealth. PASDA is a cooperative project of the Governor's Office of Administration, Office for Information Technology, Geospatial Technologies Office and Penn State Institutes for Energy and the Environment of the Pennsylvania State University. Funding is provided by the Pennsylvania Office for Information Technology, Geospatial Technologies Office. The Pennsylvania State University provides additional substantial support to PASDA for system administration, database technologies administration, and infrastructure. The High Performance Computing Center at Penn State is also providing significant resources and support for PASDA. PASDA is housed at Penn State Institute of Energy and the Environment. The purpose of Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) is to serve as a comprehensive geospatial data digital library by providing free, universal access to geospatial data and information by, for, and about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. PASDA has served for almost 20 years as the Commonwealth's node on the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), Geospatial One Stop, and the National Biological Information Infrastructure.
Data & Metadata creation
The data made available through PASDA is provided by our data partners to encourage the widespread sharing of geospatial data, eliminate the creation of redundant data sets, and to further build an inventory (through the development and hosting of metadata) of available data relevant to the Commonwealth. PASDA serves as a resource for locating data throughout the Commonwealth through its data storage, interactive mapping/webgis applications, and metadata/documentation efforts. PASDA services are provided free of charge to all users and data providers. The data on PASDA is provided by federal, state, local and regional government agencies, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions throughout the region.
Data updates to existing datasets come to PASDA at different intervals and are based on the update frequency of our data partners. Monthly, quarterly, and annual updates are the norm and include PennDOT, PA Department of Environmental Protection, PA Fish and Boat Commission, PA Department of Health, PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Chester County, Allegheny County, Lancaster County, City of Philadelphia, Southeast PA Transportation Authority, Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, PA DCNR Rivers Conservation Program, and the Natural Lands Trust.
The development of metadata on PASDA is one of the most important functions. The background of PASDA's metadata development has its origins in the development of the ANSI Z39.50 standard (also known as the ISO 23950 Search and Retrieval Protocol.) This protocol was originally designed for libraries to search and retrieve records from remote library catalogs. PASDA's goal is not only to meet the existing metadata standards but also to create metadata in a format that supports easy search and retrieval of data. In the early stages of PASDA's development the metadata was either in HTML or text format and was subsequently parsed with a metadata parser. PASDA was one of the first clearinghouses to implement the use of extensible markup language.