The York University Map Library actively acquires licensed geospatial data (vector data and imagery) for the York University community, for research and educational purposes. The majority of our licensed geospatial datasets acquired by York University Libraries is available for download via Scholars GeoPortal.
Several licensed data products are not available for direct download and can be ordered via the GAIA request system. These data are only available to current staff, students, and faculty at York University. The data are sent via a data transfer within one to two working days.
Step 1: Consult the list of geospatial datasets that are available to be ordered via GAIA.
Step 2: Go to GAIA at and log in with your Passport York user name and password.
Step 3: Read and accept the terms of the data agreement.
Step 4: Click on New Request in the top right corner.
Step 5: Click on the tab to indicate if it is four a course or for research. Provide information about your project and/assignment and when you need the data by, and how many people will be using the data.
Step 6: Provide the dataset title, as well as the geographic coverage of the file (such as the tile number or the index number for the dataset). Submit the data request.
Recent datasets available on request via GAIA
LiDAR data set produced by Airborne Imaging covering the City of Toronto is derived from the Airborne Imaging LiDAR Greater Toronto Area data library. The data was captured in Spring 2014/2015 and is distributed in ΒΌ km square tiles. The LiDAR data products available in this data set are: [1] Point Cloud LIDAR Data: LAS Format; [2] Digital Terrain Model (1 metre Grids) of Bare Earth and Full Feature: XYZ ASCII Format; [3] Hillside Images, Bare Earth and Full Feature: GeoTIFF Format; [4] 50 cm Contours, Bare Earth: Shapefile format. The data are distributed with basic metadata, detailed metadata, and reports. To order the LiDAR data consult the Index map, submit a data request via GAIA, and specify which tiles and products you need.
Legacy datasets (more than 10 years old) available via GAIA
Legacy Orthoimagery and Orthophotos
Below is a list of legacy orthophotos that can be requested via GAIA. More recent orthophotos or orthoimagery of Ontario are available via Scholars Geoportal.