Why We Opened Our Geospatial Data to Everyone

Every mapping project in the Philippines begins the same way: hunting for data. Administrative boundaries live in one agency, hazard layers in another, and half of what you find is outdated, undocumented, or locked in a format nobody can open. Teams spend their first weeks not analyzing — just gathering.

gis.byzenterra.org is our standing answer to that problem. It is an open portal where we publish geospatial datasets — cleaned, documented, and free for anyone to use. Students, LGU planners, researchers, startups: if spatial data can help you decide something, it should not be behind a gate.

What openness means to us

• Data ships with documentation — sources, coordinate systems, and known limitations stated up front.
• Formats stay open: GeoJSON, GeoPackage, and other standards any modern tool can read.
• Credit flows to the original producers of the data, always.

Spatial data is infrastructure. Nobody should have to negotiate access to a road.

The portal grows as we do — every commercial engagement byZenterra takes on helps sustain the time we spend curating and publishing open layers. If you have a dataset that deserves a public home, or want to partner on coverage, reach out. This is a long project, and it is better done together.