National Topographic Data Base (NTDB)

Description

Available through GeoGratis, the National Topographic Data Base (NTDB) comprises digital vector data sets that cover the entire Canadian landmass. Geomatics Canada has digitized and structured thousands of topographic maps, creating a complete and uniform product that can be highly useful in a broad range of industries.

The organizational unit for the NTDB is the National Topographic System (NTS), based on the North American Datum (NAD) 83. Each file (data set) consists of one NTS unit at either the 1:50,000 or 1:250,000 scale. Furthermore, the data is now available by themes within a file. The ground data is depicted through points, lines, and areas.

Coverages are organized into one of the following 13 themes: hydrography, hypsography (contours), vegetation, the road network, roads, the rail network, the electric power network, designated areas, landform and relief, water saturated soils, toponymy and manmade features.

Many of the coverages or individual data sets are listed in the following list.

Aerial cableways
Auto wreckers
Barriers/ gates
Breakwaters
Bridges
Buildings
Built up areas
Cemetaries
Chimneys
Contours (10 metre for 1:50,000 scale, 50 metre for 1:250,000 metre scale)
Conveyors
Cranes
Cut areas/ lines
Disappearing streams
Elevation points
Embarkments
Ferry routes
Footbridges
Fortifications
Golf courses
Hazards to navigation
Historic sites/ points of interest
Highway exits
Liquids: depots/ dumps
Limited use roads
Marinas
Mining areas

Navigation aids
National Topographic System (N.T.S.) limits
Parks
Picnic sites
Ponds
Railways
Roads
Runways
Sandy area
Seawalls
Silos
Sports tracks/ race tracks
Stadiums
Tanks
Toponyms
Towers
Trails
Transmission lines
Tunnels
Underground reservoirs
Vegetation
Walls/ fences
Water disturbance (rapids, discharge, etc.)
Waterbodies
Watercourses
Wetlands
Wharfs
Zoos

Spatial reference and data type

These data sets are available in geographic (lat/long) and co-ordinates; horizontal datum is NAD 83. These data are available in Esri Shapefile format.

Data manipulation and storage

There are public workstations in the Geospatial Centre that provide access to ArcGIS software programs, program extensions and data manipulation utilities. Patrons may use the Geographic Information System (GIS) and image processing software in the library to view and manipulate the data. UWaterloo faculty, students and staff may copy these data to other media (for example: CD, DVD or Zip disc) for use elsewhere.

Data output

These images may be exported from ArcGIS in a choice of bitmapped formats (also known as raster graphics) including JPG, TIFF, GIF, and BMP or in a choice of vector graphics formats including Adobe Illustrator (AI), Encapsulated Postscript (EPS), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Yet another option is PDF. The user defines the output resolution.