How to import a Mapinfo Interchange Format .MIF to a shapefile

I downloaded some species distributions from AgroAtlas earlier which were in MapInfo MIF/MID format.  It had been years since I had to import this format to .shp to view in ESRI ArcGIS and it took a little digging to figure out how.  So I thought I would blog it so I would have it documented for next time.

First of all I checked ArcGIS for a quick win, and was disapointed.  Apparently there are two options.

1. The first is to use the MIF to shapefile utility found in the ArcGIS8.x toolbar as documented here.  However this didn't work for me.  I got an error stating "Unable to finish conversion" and the tool only created a .shp and a .shx, with no .dbf or .prj for that matter.
2. The second ESRI method was to buy the ArcGIS Data Interoperability Extension which seemed a little xtreme just to check out a couple of small datasets.

So I got onto google and found a third non-ESRI solution using the GDAL/OGR Simple Feature Library in FWTools.  FWTools is a set of Open Source GIS binaries for windows or linux including the GDAL/OGR command line libraries.  FWTools is the easiest way to install the GDAL libraries onto windows and can be done via an installer .exe file downloadable here. Simply double click the exe file and follow the on screen installation instructions.  Once installed open up the FWTools Shell from either the start menu>programs or the desktop short cut then enter the following command:


ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" c:\output-path-to-shapefile\mydata.shp c:\path-to-mif-mid-files\mydata.mif

That was the simple how-to example,ogr2ogr has many other parameters that can be specified click here for full ogr2ogr usage documentation.

Ogr supports multiple data formats including: ESRI Shapefile, MapInfo Tab file, TIGER, s57, DGN, CSV, DBF, GML, KML, Interlis, SQLite, ODBC, ESRI GeoDatabase (MDB format), PostGIS/PostgreSQL, MySQL.

Other references used in researching this article:

http://osgeo-org.1803224.n2.nabble.com/Fwd-FWrools-OGR-utilities-mif-to-shape-conversion-ogr2ogr-not-recognizing-mif-file-td5313127.html


http://www.bostongis.com/PrinterFriendly.aspx?content_name=ogr_cheatsheet

Launch of the IGAD Livestock Information Portal

The IGAD LPI (Livestock Policy Initiative) team have recently re-launched the www.igad-data.org site as the IGAD Livestock Information Portal.  As well as continuing to provide the most comprehensive GIS database currently available for the IGAD region.  It is now also a key resource of Livestock Policy documents, updated by contacts on the ground in each of the seven member countries.


IGAD is the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a seven-country regional development organization in East Africa. Its headquarters are located in Djibouti City.  The member countries include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

The IGAD Livestock Policy Initiative is a project implemented by IGAD through the UN FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation) with the financial support of the European Commission.

EDEN Data Portal: A resource for publically available European environmental data:

This is "one of our" data portal sites we manage for a European research project Emerging Diseases in a changing European eNvironment (EDEN). It is designed as a data repository and resource primarily for the project members, however we have made all the data that is publically available elsewhere on the web available to anyone who takes a minute to register. This data includes satellite imagery, cleaned gazeteers, land cover, DEM, and climate data to name a few.

Link to the EDEN Data Archive here.

All the data is clipped to the EDEN extent which includes Europe and parts of the North coast of Africa.. We have even cleaned some of the data up for you or added value in other ways, for instance in the NGA Gazeteer dataset we have removed any place names that are labelled in one country but are georeferenced to another.

Even though most of the data will be available from elsewhere on the web, the fact the EDEN Data portal has so many datasets in one place it is a fantastic place to start looking for what data is available.

The datasite has also one of the most extensive list of GIS links around, over 1000 in all and has a number of tutorials for a variety of GIS software. The site is well worth a look!

FYI: The site was designed and is managed by Euro-AEGIS a partnership of ERGO (my employer) and Avia-GIS for the EDEN Project.