[open-sustainability] Open UK weather data

Thu Mar 21 10:45:53 UTC 2013

Hello James,

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

I am member of the OKFN Spain Initiative and promoting a working group of
Open Environmental Data in which we have been involved somehow in opening
up Spanish meteo data managed by AEMET, the Spanish Metorological Agency. I
summarize some of the actions we have promoted, which maybe you find
interesting and useful for your objectives:

* The Spanish Meteo data opened an FTP server in 2010 offering for free
several sets of data: Observation measurements, solar radiation, background
air pollution, lightning, time series, etc.
* It has been used during two years, with peaks of 190000 daily downloads.
* By the end of 2012, AEMET decided to close the free FTP server and start
charging again for the data [1].
* We started a Change.org campaing [2] which has been signed by around
5.000 people all around the world. In is not a significant number, if not
for most of the signatories are scientists, companies and enthusiasts who were
giving practical use of the data.
* Thanks to the campaign, we have gathered about 160 use cases of the data
(in spanish) [3], some of them were translated [4] and presented at SoData
conference by Nicola Baldeck [5], founder of OpenMeteoData.org.

I am very interested in your campaing. We want to push here in Spain for
almost the same: reopening the FTP server and improving the mechanisms for
accessing and reusing meteo data, not only historical time series but any
other data managed by public agencies.

Please, do not hesitate to use the uses cases spreadsheet for your purposes
and the AEMET FTP story if you want. It would be great also to follow your
efforts in UK to push the AEMET here in Spain. We could provide feedback to
each other. Do you think we can use some of the arguments you are providing
in the petition to push the AEMET here in Spain?

Best regards,

--
Félix
@fpedrera

[1] http://epsiplatform.eu/content/spanish-meteo-restarts-charging-data
[2]
http://www.change.org/es/peticiones/agencia-estatal-de-meteorolog%C3%ADa-aemet-que-no-se-cierre-el-acceso-a-los-datos-por-ftp
[3]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoUm-6GHzEGFdFRVMHdqX3BCUjlMbEd0UEdjdVpCbXc&usp=sharing
[4]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vmQqZuCr8jGBdsHNok3G96wOA3Uf3SucvpEwNQp_iqE/edit?usp=sharing
[5]
http://www.slideshare.net/nicolasbaldeck9/ouvrir-les-donnes-mtorologiques-pour-la-recherche-openmeteodata

2013/3/20 James Smith <james at floppy.org.uk>

>  Hi everyone,
>
> We've just published a blog post about a call for Open UK weather data. If
> you'd be interested in using this sort of data, either commercially or
> non-commercially, we'd encourage you to add your voice to the data request.
>
> See our blog post at
> http://www.cleanweb.org.uk/blog/2013/03/17/open-weather-data/ and the
> data.gov.uk benefits case at
> http://data.gov.uk/benefits-of-releasing-historical-ukmo-observation-data
>
> cheers,
> James
>
>
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> open-sustainability mailing list
> open-sustainability at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-sustainability
>
>
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