Handy online data sources
Getting on top of your own project data is great. What is even better is to be able to leverage your data collection by combining it with the vast data resources available in the public domain. In time, Truii will allow you to directly combine public data it with your own data. However in the mean time you need to track down the datasets and load them into Truii. To get you started, below are a collection of open data sources that we use.
Quandl.com
Coverage: Global
Data topics: Everything! Government, trade, environmental, health, education, employment
If you are searching for interesting data, the first and most comprehensive site you should visit is Quandl.com. They have over 8,000,000 indexed and structured data sets available for searching and downloading. If you want to know how much coffee was exported from Brazil in the last 20 years and how that relates to the international coffee price – or just about any other international trade and commerce metric – then Quandl is a great place to start.
worldbank.org
Coverage: Global
Data topics: Government, trade, environmental, health, education, employment
Want to know about the international trade, life expectancy, flow of international aid plus a whole lot more, then the World Bank provides a rich collection of searchable structured data for download.
Gapminder
Coverage: Global
Data topics: Government, trade, environmental, health, education, employment
Gapminder has collated very interesting data from many sources to allow you to conduct global analysis of social and wellbeing.
Following are some Australian sites that I frequently use
Open Data Institute -Queensland
Coverage: Australia
Data topics: Everything! Government, trade, environmental, health, education, employment
The Open Data Institute (Queensland) has collated a huge list (59 at last count) of all the open data repositories for Australia. The list covers federal, state and local government data portals.
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Coverage: Australia
Data topics: Demographic, Business
The Australian Bureau of Statistics undertakes a national census every 5 years and a whole lot more in between. This site has a wealth of demographic and business data collected and maintained by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This data is great to overlay on your local data for answering questions like ‘what are the demographic characteristics of my clients and where are some more of these types of people to allow me to better target my marketing?’
Geosciences Australia
Coverage: Australia
Data topics: Environmental, spatial
Geosciences Australia has a great collection of environmental data in various formats. Extensive collection of spatial data with national coverage.
data.gov.au
Coverage: Australia
Data topics: Government, education, health, environmental
Federal government site. This site has 1800+ datasets of public data provided by Australian federal, state and even local government agencies covering a vast array of topics.
Victorian Data Warehouse
Coverage: Victoria,Australia
Data topics: Environmental, water quality, stream flow
This site is run by the state government of Victoria, Australia and is a great repository of environmental data related to rivers and streams. I use this site a lot. It is a little quirky to get used to, but once you work out how to download the data it is very useful source of water quality and stream gauging data.
Queensland Data Portal
Coverage: Queensland,Australia
Data topics: Government, education, health, environmental, community
This site is run by the state government of Queensland, Australia who have embraced the approach to open data and are actively publishing their data. There are currently 600+ (and growing) well organised and searchable data sets from the Qld state government. The data sets that I have played with are vehicle and vessel registration, police records, environmental records and education statistics for the state of Queensland, Australia. Did you know that on average there is a registered boat parked in the backyard of about one in every seven (6.75) houses in Queensland, add canoes, kayaks and surfboards and you realise what an aquatic pastime this state has. No wonder I get pamphlets in my letter box trying to sell me fishing rods every other week.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology
Coverage: Australia
Data topics: Stream discharge, plus more environmental data coming soon
In Australia (as with many other places) most stream gauging is managed by state governments and water authorities. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology collates a national selection of these sites and makes the data available. The Bureau of Meteorology (or Bom as the locals call it) also hosts some other great data collections and climatic data archives much like the US National climatic data centre run by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Brisbane City data portal
Coverage: Brisbane, Australia
Data topics: Government, planning, community activity
This is a small collection of data sets from Brisbane City Council collection of datasets. Whilst the collection is small it is planned to grow with a new initiative to publish data. We shamelessly include it in this list because Brisbane is Truii’s home town!
More useful links as they come to light.
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