[okfn-discuss] [okfn-labs] OKFN & Environment Data

Mon Oct 15 16:49:27 UTC 2012

Dear all,

Thank you for all these thoughts and links! There is also one thing to add:

I would also like to draw your attention to another related initiative. My
colleagues from the Centre for Sustainable Communications at the Royal
Institute for Technology KTH have startred http://opensustainability.info/ as
an initiative to promote open sustainability data and created the database
http://footprinted.org.

They would like to reboot this initiative: have an independent platform
where people working on sustainability issues can meet and work towards
open shared formats/tools/solutions together instead of separately on their
own.

They could contribute with a lot of contacts in the field and bringing this
under the umbrella of the OKFN.

I look forward to more news and a possible call / meeting to clarify
further steps in this area.

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:33 AM, Félix Pedrera García <
felix.pedrera at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I am very interested in opening up environment data, specifically air
> quality data. It's great to see it moves around the OKFN, so count me in if
> a specific list or workgroup (through the existing open climate group or
> other mechanisms).
>
> In Spain accessing air quality data is quite tedious. I collected
> information on the situation in other countries like UK and in general,
> from what I've been able to explore, accessing information on air quality
> in general is possible through the web of autonomous regions and
> municipalities in Spain, and official sites in countries through specific
> websites  for UK. Also, there exists an european database, AirBase [2],
> which provides information until 2011 at the European level, and some
> interfaces that allow reuse this data from other applications, mainly web
> map services. These interfaces are listed on The Data Hub [3].
>
> The problems that I have appreciated with this information are mainly:
>
> * I didn't find an easy access for updated information in near real time,
> although it is published on websites, it is seems it is not available
> through mechanisms that promote reuse (an API or direct links to raw data).
> * The format of the data is not homogeneous, for example for the city of
> Madrid, the data format for the validated information is different from the
> pre-validated data and in turn different from that offered by other
> regions. There is also disparity in formats between countries. This makes
> it difficult to consistently treat the information independently of the
> provider  (municipality, region, country or European source). Other
> standard formats that can be applied, as DEM, XML or NetCDF are generally
> too complex for citizens which are mainly familiar with CSV or XLS. JSON or
> GeoJSON are also more suitable for web/mobile developers.
> * Although the information is accessible via the Internet, often it
> requires manual intervention (fill forms, receive data in email, etc..)
> that makes it more difficult to be treated, although it can always be
> approached using scraping techniques.
> * Proprietary technologies (like Microsoft file formats or software ESRI)
> are used to support this information. There are open source alternatives.
> * In general, the information available is technical oriented rather than
> for general reuse.
>
> Talking about this issue with some scientists and organizations working
> with these data, they tell me that usually they get the data using the
> websites of the air quality agencies, sometimes scraping, and in some cases
> they contact them directly in order to recieve data in machine-readable
> format.
>
> In my opinion, there is much room for improvement in this area to
> facilitate accessing this information not only to be used by experts but
> making it easy for general use applying the open data principles and the
> open source and latest Internet technologies.
>
> As proof of concept of reuse of the EEA data, here you can see the
> european air quality network on the open source tool CartoDB:
>
> * https://fpedrera.cartodb.com/tables/airbase_v6_stations/embed_map.
> (Classified by type of station: Background, Traffic, Industrial).
>
> The information can be queried also very easily through its SQL API:
>
> *
> http://fpedrera.cartodb.com/api/v2/sql?q=SELECT%20*%20FROM%20airbase_v6_stations%20where%20station_city=%27MADRID%27%20and%20type_of_station=%27Background%27
>
> I am also a bit involved in the AirQualityEgg [4] initiative through the
> Internet of Things Madrid group [5]. It's quite similar to that mentioned
> by Rafael Pezzi, and the data from the sensors will be pushed to COSM,
> although there are maybe better alternatives for open publication.
>
> Rafael, maybe you can put an eye on this project since some issues you'll
> face are maybe solved or at least discussed. Feel free to contact me if you
> want more information.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> --
> Félix Pedrera
> Twitter > @fpedrera
>
> [1] http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/
> [2] http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/air/airbase
> [3] http://thedatahub.org/es/dataset/discomap
> [4] http://airqualityegg.wikispaces.com/AirQualityEgg
> [5] http://www.meetup.com/iotmadrid/
>
>
> 2012/10/12 Velichka Dimitrova <velichka.dimitrova at okfn.org>
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Very happy to hear about this conversation getting started.
>>
>> Indeed we planned to have a sprint about energy this fall -
>> http://sprints.okfnlabs.org/energy/ - which we have postponed until the
>> beginning of next year. We are looking into clearly defining a topic what
>> we are going to work on, preparing the data and background research in
>> advance.
>>
>> A revived Open Climate Science working group as well as social scientists
>> with environmental focus from the Open Economics working group<http://openeconomics.net/> could
>> assist in this.
>>
>> Please let us know if:
>>
>>    - If you have any ideas about a topic, which could be addressed in
>>    the sprint or
>>    - you would like to participate in the current discussion around the
>>    theme of energy subsidies
>>
>> Looking forward to hear from you!
>>
>> Velichka
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 12:31 PM, James Smith <james at floppy.org.uk>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On Friday, 12 October 2012 at 12:23, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 1:18 PM, James Smith <james at floppy.org.uk>wrote:
>>>
>>>  I can't speak for AMEE (any more), but this is unlikely to come from
>>> within the company. Adoption of the data by external organisations
>>> interested in openness is the only way it's likely to happen at this point,
>>> unfortunately.
>>>
>>>
>>> Do you think that AMEE might be able to provide pointers to relevant
>>> URLs where someone else could find descriptions of / links to the openly
>>> licensed data they (re-)publish?
>>>
>>> The data is released with all sources and documentation in
>>> https://github.com/AMEE/datasets. This content is all searchable via
>>> http://discover.amee.com, but there's a lot of it! There is an open
>>> format for computable datasets (written to support an open AMEE effort) at
>>> https://github.com/spatchcock/calcJSON and a conversion tool from AMEE
>>> to calcJSON at https://github.com/Floppy/connery, which was written at
>>> the OKFestival during the greenhackathon.
>>>
>>> However, that's all probably *completely* impenetrable to someone
>>> without knowledge of what AMEE does and how it structures its data, so the
>>> first step would be to get something written up explaining it all.
>>>
>>> I believe we're planning a dedicated sprint focusing on energy, the
>>> environment and climate data with OKFN Labs. This is based on work we did
>>> with Europe's Energy last year:
>>> http://energy.publicdata.eu/ee/index.html
>>>
>>> Yes, Velichka was telling me about this; sounds good.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> James
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> okfn-discuss mailing list
>>> okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Velichka Dimitrova
>> Coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group
>> Open Knowledge Foundation
>> http://okfn.org | http://openeconomics.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> okfn-labs mailing list
>> okfn-labs at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-labs
>>
>>
>

-- 
Velichka Dimitrova
Coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group
Open Knowledge Foundation
http://okfn.org | http://openeconomics.net
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