Burlington Open Data pilot & datasets

[NikGarkusha]

Some of you may have heard that the City of Burlington kicked of an
Open Data pilot: http://cms.burlington.ca/Page7429.aspx (I posted on
the background and history here: http://openhalton.ca/2011/09/burlington-open-data-pilot/
)

I know that some of the other cities in Halton are looking at what
Burlington is doing, my hope is that Hamilton is looking at it as well
as the city evaluates its options. One of the key selling points and a
criterion for success is availability of citizen-ready apps based on
the data released. If we can showcase a couple of great apps created
from the data (as limited as it is), it could go a long way to helping
shopw what’s possible with open data in our region.


So, I’m asking folks in this group, who have the skills and interest
-- to look at the Parks data for Burlington and put an app together to
help this Open Data pilot succeed. The apps & frameworks are obviously
easy to re-use once Hamilton's parks data is made available.


I already put together a quick app “Burlington Parks Finder” using
Simile Exhibit:
http://openhalton.ca/burlingtonparks/

It’s nothing fancy, but in the process I normalized and fixed up some
of the data, converted UTM coordinates to Lat/Lon and exposed the 3
datasets via some APIs for easy access:
Parks: http://datadotgc2.cloudapp.net/DataBrowser/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonParks
- XML/Atom: http://datadotgcds2.cloudapp.net/v1/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonParks/
- Json: http://datadotgcds2.cloudapp.net/v1/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonParks/?format=json

Facilities: http://datadotgc2.cloudapp.net/DataBrowser/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonFacilities
- XML/Atom: http://datadotgcds2.cloudapp.net/v1/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonFacilities/
- Json: http://datadotgcds2.cloudapp.net/v1/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonFacilities/?format=json

Fields & Courts: http://datadotgc2.cloudapp.net/DataBrowser/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonFields
- XML/Atom: http://datadotgcds2.cloudapp.net/v1/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonFields/
- Json: http://datadotgcds2.cloudapp.net/v1/Hack%20OpenData/BurlingtonFields/?format=json

[Joey Coleman]

Is it possible to arrange a hackfest with City of Burlington staff on a Saturday morning? I'm confident a bunch of us from Hamilton can hop the 11 Bus from Hamilton that stops in front of Burlington City Hall.

Be a lot of fun to show a local city what's possible when government works with the community.

- Joey

[NikG]

Awesome idea, I will propose to the city. 

what datasets would everyone love to hack?

[Brian Graham]

As many as we can, but lets go for something with marketable impact
just to be reasonable here ;).

I work in Burlington and probably spend half my life in that city, the
other half here.

Public transit, such as bus/train (does GO have an API?).

Events. I know there's constantly something going on by the
waterfront.

Food, restaurants, etc. I've seen a food inspection site for Hamilton
somewhere that posts all the food inspections online, I just can't
recall the site.

Roadwork. (Dude, I wish I knew when they were going to change lane
closures on that fairview construction zone, I go through it every
day, and one monday late at night they blocked the whole street).

Finances -- I know this is probably a big one, but this would be
amazing to just drop out "Yeah, here's the books." for everyone to
see.

I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but with sets like
this we could probably prototype something that gets people excited.
But don't stop with my ideas, keep listing things, or even better,
ways we could combine these sets!

[Mark Hornblower]

GO *must* have either an API or at least an open feed of current data (there are a number of third party apps - GO Transit Status, GO Transit Sidekick, GO Transit Companion - that use live information) but I will be damned if I can actually find any information on it.

Huh.

On Sep 22, 2011, at 9:20 PM, Brian Graham wrote:

Public transit, such as bus/train (does GO have an API?).

[NikGarkusha]

What's interesting about Transit data, is that Burlington already has
a transit feed (GTFS) that they share with Google: http://cms.burlington.ca/Page6212.aspx
GO Transit does the same, but also share the feed publicly:
http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/schedules/DeveloperResources.aspx

The opportunity for Burlington is to provide the feed for their
transit in GTFS as open data.

So, while the basic trip planning is already something that exists
from Googlethe tore must be reasons for other apps to exist, and
opportunity to either improve by providing more options on different
devices or to integrate / overlay some additional datasets.

For example, for those parks in the Pilot dataset that don't have
parking, what would be the transit options to get to those parks?

Are there any other interesting use-cases to mash up transit data with
anything else?

[NikG]

Mark,

Can you please copy+paste your thoughts below into a separate email to the city's ITS department:  i...@burlington.ca 

I suspect those guys are counting citizen input via email as one of their metrics.

thanks!

Nik

[Mark Hornblower]

The GTFS feed is just "static" information such as routes, schedules, and facilities, no? These apps use real-time "Train XX on track YY will be delayed ZZ minutes" kind of information.

And yes, I will add my comments to the pile at Burlington ITS'

M

[Joey Coleman]

Sounds like there are scraping the GO transit updates page: http://www.gotransit.com/publicroot/en/updates/status.aspx

[NikG]

RE: GTFS, the traditional use is static, although there's a new real-time spec now: http://code.google.com/transit/realtime/

I think dynamic information is great, but requires availability of either GPS data or arrival/departure data at stops to calculate/estimate arrival times & delays. Many agencies have challenges releasing GPS data because of agreements, etc. Not sure what the case is with Burlington, but this is a very solid idea -- definitely worth an ask!