Spatial, land and infrastructure data resources
Last updated
Last updated
For an introduction to spatial data see this , especially the .
National
covers a large variety of spatial data incl. admin boundaries, agriculture, hydrology, infrastructure, environment and properties. Municipalities also load their own data on the portal so there are some niche data sets for specific areas.
has a comprehensive mix of spatial data
(SASDI) and list
Provinces and cities
The hosts data on themes ranging from human settlements to health services, education and available land
The on for Free State and Northern Cape provinces (registration required) provides resource and infrastructure-related spatial data.
and broader
Administrative boundaries: Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) boundaries which define provincial, municipality and ward boundaries. All files can be accessed on the . Also access MDB, 'main place' and 'subplace' information - similar to suburb - as Shapefiles on (which come from ).
Postal codes: The postal codes define regions that are used by the Post Office for delivery of parcels, although they don't seem to correspond to other boundaries very clearly. The postal code lists can be downloaded .
Surveyed land/ cadastral information: Most land (usually termed a township, allotment, holding, parcel, portion, erf and/or farm amongst others) in South Africa is surveyed to define the boundaries of the land - referred to as cadastral information. It must be surveyed before it is subdivided or sold and registered in the deeds office. When surveyed and included in the spatial cadastral database by the Chief Surveyor General (CSG) Office, the land is assigned a unique alphanumeric key explained . Cadastral information can be viewed on the newishThe is a good place to go for various spatial data.
Title deeds: The ownership of land (or more broadly property) is largely governed by title deeds, which specify who the owner is - whether a private, individual person, trust, tribal authority, company or state entity. Deeds information can be requested by registering as a user on , via , on the , or through a private provider like .
Land reform: Phase 1 State Land Audit conducted by the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. A 2013 report summary presentation can be found on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) and the full report can be accessed on the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (or on the PMG ) The Phase 1 State Land Audit Dataset for eThekwini Region can be accessed and for the . These datasets contain over 140,000 records for registered State-owned (government department, municipality and similar) land in these two areas.
The Land Claims Court provides a concerning land claims cases referred by the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (CRLR) office or directly from claimants or affected land owners. Date of judgment, judge, applicant and respondents Detailed information on merits and order Each judgment published as a scanned PDF file Each Land Claims Court judgment is published as a single scanned PDF which can be downloaded directly from the list of judgments published for each year.
Valuation roll: The valuation roll for an area is largely based on cadastral and deeds information, along with valuation of the properties which is done by the municipalities themselves ('municipal valuer'), to calculate the rates that landlords must pay for municipal services. These valuation rolls are typically public, e.g.: , , , , .
Zoning: City of Cape Town and , , City of Johannesburg incl. zoning.
Land use and capabilities: The South African Land Observatory data can be accessed and provides information on land use and land capabilities [Currently not serving data]. Rather look at DEA's for land cover and land use data, for biodiversity information, and some datasets from The includes land use and land cover data. also has SA national land use/ cover data.
Education: Start with school locations from and with GPS coordinates. And addresses for from DHET.
Safety: You can also access updated datasets on police stations from the SAPS (along with station ), or see these example extracts of and .
Health: See all the health service and facilities location data on .
Social grants: Post office locations can be accessed (available as separate and datasets) and SASSA service points through a map view , or as a dataset with .
Travel: To see what people's travel patterns are like (origin-destination, duration, etc), you can access micro-data from the 2013 National Household Travel Survey on (registration required), as well as this on travel to places of study. Metrorail and are buried in pdfs. And airport arrival and departure statistics over multiple years are available in pdfs too from ACSA (see below for more transport related infrastructure data).
Settlement planning and construction: The Housing Development Agency hosts a variety of dashboards through including the , primarily for Northern Cape and North West municipalities. The explores the upgrade potential of informal settlements in Cape Town. For checking construction companies and builders, users can submit information on the NHBRC registration verification A High Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL) dataset is available from this and on or .
Housing market: Have a look at the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa . StatsSA publishes an interesting annual report on , based on submissions from municipalities.
Estate agents: The Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) including registration status.
Evictions: This new provides useful information on eviction laws and rights.
DAFF happens to have datasets on and from the late 1990s. But you can also get regularly updated open roads and rail data from OpenStreetMap as pbf or Shapefile, or via . Globally crowdsourced airport data can be accessed from as csv file.
The more official NGI data can be accessed from for "Topographical Vector Data" in the list view, then downloading the zipped Shapefile for your Province.
The includes transport-related data.
and have collaborative project to create open map of the world.
Operating from DMR and more detailed mining and geological data is available at .
on mining activity including licenses, water permits and related content including a .
Eskom publishes plans for the as a Shapefile which includes location of existing and future substations and transmission lines. More detailed data on electricity transmission is available on the , which also has data on biomass availability amongst others.
The posts regulatory decisions and licenses in PDFs, but many of these have been harvested and also available on the Bioenergy Atlas.
Electricity tariff data is available on the Eskom . If you live in one of the larger cities of South Africa your electricity is probably coming via a '' instead of directly from Eskom. The distributors are normally a municipality or a municipal entity like City Power in Joburg. You can confirm this by looking at the electricity account statement which should indicate who is providing you with electricity. If you are receiving electricity from the municipality then you are probably more interested in municipal tariff data such as for in Joburg, , Buffalo City ( folder), , .
The energy sector is diversifying and changing relatively quickly, so it's interesting to visualise what's happening in the renewable energy space. DEA , such as [currently being migrated], on location and capacity of renewable energy project approvals, renewable energy development zones and transmission corridors; DOE shares information on location and capacity of renewable energy projects through (); and you can get wind energy data .
See a dedicated page on water .
The most interesting spatial perspective on economic activity is from StepSA, and the updated in 2018. Otherwise, private data providers like and use StatsSA and other data sources to estimate activity down to the local municipality (and possibly even ward?) level.