Open Environmental Data

= Open Environmental Data =

For our latest list of open data related to the environment, please see the Climate Data group on CKAN.

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This is a page for notes and references relating to Open Environmental Data.

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?

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!


 * overview of environmental data in Law and Policy
 * Climate Data group on CKAN
 * packages tagged 'environment' on CKAN (cf. old list of Environmental Datasets)
 * list of Environmental Data Distributors
 * list of Environmental Research Groups
 * list of Software for Environmental Data

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:


 * BenHarden, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
 * JonathanGray, Open Knowledge Foundation
 * TomChance, Green Party & BioRegional

Add packages
Add any lists to be investigated/integrated here:


 * http://ergodd.zoo.ox.ac.uk/eden/index.php?p=10
 * Database of emissions data sources.xls|&do=get
 * File appears to be corrupted, data retrieved at: Database of emissions data
 * Data Sources page at Real Climate. See also Where's the data? blog post for more sources.
 * Pangaea - Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental Data. Under CC-BY.
 * Climate Change Data Portal - World Bank
 * IPCC - Data Ditstribution Centre
 * NOMADS - NCEP
 * The NOMADS servers will shortly have the latest suite of the NCEP (Coupled Forecast System CFSR) 31 year climate realanysis dataset, and others. The official release date for CFSR is currently Feb 1, 2010.  It is expected this will be one of NOAA's most cited/used datasets in a decade or more.
 * A write up is here on the 3 datasets: http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov/NOAAReanalysis/ and the Data will be eventually be found here on NOMADS (avbl in Early 2010): http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov/
 * New datasets + contact details:
 * The following are climate data sets (and contacts) that can be added to the list.
 * IGRA - Imke Durre 
 * GHCN- Jay Lawrimore 
 * USHCN- Matt Menne 
 * IBTracs - Dave Levinson 
 * Also please add following to your list of reasons to publish: "Improve the ability to adopt and  utilize new/better data storage, format, discovery, and transmission technologies as they become available."
 * Additions to the list:
 * SSMI/I - Hilawae Semunegus (Hilawae.Semunegus@noaa.gov)
 * OISST - Dick Reynolds and Viva Banzon (viva.banzon@noaa.gov)
 * ISCCP B1 - Ken Knapp (ken.knapp@noaa.gov)