The National Map is a website for map-based access to spatial data from Australian government agencies. It is an initiative of the Australian Commonwealth Government's Department of Communications and the software has been developed by NICTA working closely with the Department of Communications, Geoscience Australia and other government agencies.
The National Map is a fully open architecture. When you access data through it, you are typically accessing the data directly from the government department or agency which is the custodian of that data.
The National Map...
To see what data is available on the National Map, refer to the Data Catalogue in the National Map itself. Click the Data Catalogue tab and expand the Data Set group names.
Just go to http://nationalmap.gov.au/. Most operations are obvious, but you can click the Help button for specific instructions.
For further information email nationalmap@lists.nicta.com.au. Feel free to send us feedback and bug reports.
Spatial data sets which are placed on data.gov.au using supported data formats and protocols (such as WMS) will automatically be included in the National Map. See the How To... page for more information.
Australian government agencies that wish to find out more information about contributing data sets to the National Map should email nationalmap@lists.nicta.com.au with their questions. Typically, the National Map does not store the data itself, but refers to the data servers of the data contributors, directly taking that data and presenting it overlaid over a map. Therefore, agencies providing data directly must have the data available via an online server using a standard protocol.
The National Map is an Open Source system available as a Github project. The core software of this system was initially developed by NICTA for the National Map, but has subsequently been used for other projects. It has been made available to assist with the development of other spatial data viewing applications.
The National Map core software is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"). You may not use the source code files except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
In developing the National Map, NICTA has used open source software and contributed back to it. Portions of the National Map use the following copyrighted open source material, the use of which is hereby acknowledged. For more detail on the licenses see our Github project.