Welcome to the Geospatial Centre

The Geospatial Centre is an inviting hub which provides cartographic and Geographic Information System (GIS) services to the University of Waterloo community. Services include reference, workshops, and access to GIS and remote sensing data.

Students, faculty, and staff have access to digital and printed maps, GIS technology, aerial photographs, and more.

The Geospatial Centre is located in the Dana Porter Library, third floor, room 328.

  1. Mar. 30, 2023Historical Vernon City Directories Mapped

    This initiative aims to provide scholars, researchers, and the public with a visual directory, index, and account of Kitchener's residential, business and industrial development. This Historical GIS project takes decades of digitized Vernon city directories (years 1901+), cleanses, collates and geo-locates over a million searchable individual entries using a map platform.

  2. Mar. 28, 2023Stats Can 2021 Data files now available

    Statistics Canada thematic data files have been downloaded and prepared for library users as gdb and shapefiles. Additional data will be downloaded as it becomes available. To date we have:

    • Age & Sex
    • Citizenship
    • Commute
    • Employment
    • Ethnicity
    • Household Compoisition & Marital Status
    • Income
    • Indigenous
    • Languages
    • Minorities
    • Mobility
    • Religion
  3. Aug. 12, 2021Updated Orthoimagery: Waterloo, Toronto, Durham, Guelph

    The Geospatial Centre is providing access to updated orthoimagery for a number of cities via the Scholars GeoPortal. We now have 2018 and 2020 Waterloo, 2020 Guelph, 2020 Durham Region and 2020 Toronto. Resolution is between 8cm - 12cm. 

    For access, please visit:

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Our hours

GIS services are available virtually via Teams, OneDrive and email. You may also book appointments for in-person consultations by using the Ask us form. The Geospatial Centre is open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Got a question? Ask us!