Try these websites if you want to get your hands on some interesting GIS data for Scotland.
Scottish Government - lots of Scottish GIS data for download. You must agree to conditions first.
Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation - my own SIMD mapping site, with interactive maps and all SIMD data for all years/domains to download as shp and xls.
OS OpenData - open data for Great Britain, from Ordnance Survey. A really fantastic resource.
Natural Earth - really excellent global GIS data which also happens to be free and high quality. This really is fantastic.
My SIMD mega shapefile - a big shapefile with lots of attributes from the 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2012 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. It comes with an Excel spreadsheet which explains the column headers. It's on my SIMD mapping site. Click on the little red arrows on the linked page to download.
Natural Spaces, from Scottish Natural Heritage - this page has links to tons of shapefiles relating to the natural environment in Scotland. You'll have to log in or register to use this.
Historic Scotland - GIS data from Historic Scotland, but you'll have to agree to the terms first. Contains data on such things as listed buildings and conservation areas.
WMS Layers for National Marine Plan - thanks to Sam Franklin for suggesting this source. This is a bit more technical but I'm guessing if you know what WMS is you'll be okay.
Building footprints - I made this layer by combining the buildings layers from Ordnance Survey's OS OpenData Vector Map District product for all Scottish tiles. You can use this layer to clip other areas (e.g. wards, Data Zones, to produce dasymetric maps). This is open data but if you use it you still have to display the OS copyright notice, as follows: "Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right [year]". I hope you find it useful.
Got any more suggestions for Scottish GIS data? Let me know.
