Open Environmental Data

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Contents

  1. Open Environmental Data
    1. Introduction
      1. What is Open Environmental Data?
      2. Types of Environmental Data
    2. Activities
      1. Plan
      2. In Progress
      3. Participate

Introduction

What is Open Environmental Data?

Open Environmental Data is data relevant to study of the environment that anyone is free to access, re-use and redistribute (see the Open Knowledge Definition). This includes data that is in the public domain (such as data produced in the normal operation of certain US government departments), and data that has been made available under an open license.

Types of Environmental Data

'Data relevant to the study of the environment' can include information about:

  • the atmosphere
  • the weather
  • air quality
  • temperature
  • the ocean
  • rivers
  • water levels
  • water quality
  • carbon emissions
  • pollution
  • soil erosion
  • biodiversity

todo: it would be good to have more developed, comprehensive schematic for this - does one exist?

Activities

Plan

Short term:

  • create and maintain a list of publicly accessible environmental datasets
  • create an entry for any open datasets in CKAN
  • contact relevant parties for datasets with ambiguous status/license
  • create and maintain a list of relevant environmental research groups, organisations and links
  • investigate tools to analyse/represent data - particularly those that are open
  • investigate legislation and policy relevant to environmental data in different jurisdictions

Medium term:

  • mirror/archive (selected) open datasets in a subversion repository
  • investigate and attempt to harmonise data formats

Longer term:

  • think about developing a web application to help explore datasets

In Progress

Here are a list of things that we are currently working on. Please don't hesitate to contribute!

Participate

Please join okfn-discuss and introduce yourself if you'd like to get involved in this project. Add your name here if you'd like to be acknowledged as a contributor: