The best way to browse for data is to look through a list of data portals that may offer relevant information. Unfortunately, maintaining an up-to-date and comprehensive list of the thousands of data portals being managed by governments, companies, and organizations all over the world can be extremely challenging due to the constant public release of new portals and changes in URLs to existing portals. Consequently, this guide provides links to the best lists of open data portals on the internet rather than attempting to recreate the work that others are already doing so well. The data portal lists provided by this guide are the best available on the internet, but that does not mean that they are perfect.
https://data.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/open-data-sources@public/
This open data portal list developed by OpenDataSoft is an excellent resource for users looking for geospatial data. The workflow used to develop the data portal list is well documented, the list is impressively comprehensive with 2900+ portals listed, and the portal links are clearly organized by geographic area.
http://us-cities.survey.okfn.org/
The US City Open Data Census not only provides links to open local government datasets, but also ranks cities based on their data sharing policies
The Global Open Data Index ranks countries based on their level of data openness and provides links to specific datasets (both spatial and non-spatial)
https://opendatamonitor.eu/frontend/web/index.php?r=dashboard%2Findex
An EU funded website that ranks the data openness of European countries and makes it easy to find national, provincial, and city level geoportals by browsing by country of interest.
https://github.com/awesomedata/awesome-public-datasets
A comprehensive list of open data portals that includes spatial and non-spatial data. The list is organized by data subject area to facilitate browsing.
This guide, "Geographic Information Science" is a derivative of "GIS & Geospatial Data Services" from UT Libraries used under CC BY NC. This guide, "Geographic Information Sciences" is licensed under CC BY NC.
