SimplyMap Canada is now available for free trials and has been updated with Environics Analytics data to include the 2009 Estimates and 2014 Projections. They have also added over 1.3 million Canadian businesses from D&B® which include legal name, business name, NAIC codes, SIC codes, address, telephone number, web address, and general description. The business data is updated on a quarterly basis. Simply Map will demo this product at the Robarts Library (room TBA) on Thursday November 19th, 10AM-12PM. Registration is encouraged using the following Doodle (click on the Doodle title below).
For further information or questions, please contact marcel.fortin@utoronto.ca
Monday, November 9, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Crucial Elements Missing in Toronto's Open Data Initiative - Part II
I have received a number of emails in response to my previous post concerning Toronto's Open Data initiative. A few have told me they agreed with my comments about the lack of interest by academics and GIS professionals to participate in the event and in the dialogue with the city. However, a few have pointed out that I sounded disappointed at the data the City of Toronto has made available for free, and that I also sounded condescending towards developers and hackers.
Firstly, let me state that I was not criticizing the City of Toronto with my comments. I think it's a wonderful thing that they are making data available for free and I know it was a not an easy task to accomplish following the CUPE strike this past summer. Secondly, I think it is crucial that developers and hackers have data to build tools, games, applications etc. These data are necessary to allow the creative juices to flow in the programming community. With their creativity and ingenuity, their access to these data can only make Toronto a better place. And since they are the ones who have asked for data, they should have access to what they want and need.
But, being from the academic sector, I could not help but feel disappointed in being one of the few asking for data necessary to do my work in serving the GIS and Data communities. Having worked with City of Toronto data for over ten years now, I know of a number of datasets that exist that are crucial to the academic work at the University of Toronto and elsewhere that are not in the current offering. I realize more datasets are forthcoming, but this is where my fear and pleas are based. I do not want to be the only one asking for the datasets I think are important to liberate because why would the City of Toronto take my word for it that the data are necessary? I want the communities I work with (ie. academics and GIS professionals) to help me by making their demands known.
A second fear that I have is that the freeing up of data will take on a rather washed delivery structure and format if we do not ask for the data in the formats we know they exist in. That is, that datasets will be distributed only in part or in formats unusable for most GIS work. See another post on this subject here. Not a day goes by that I do not get asked about land use data for Toronto. Data, by the way, that I receive four times per year from the City of Mississauga and in GIS format! When these for Toronto are released in the future, I have been told twice now by city officials, they will continue to be disseminated via the Official Plan in PDF format. As for zoning, they will only be disseminated through the web application toronto.ca/zoning. PDF and web maps are two methods of delivery that simply are unusable for analysis purposes.
And so again, I ask academics, GIS professionals, and librarians to please make your data needs known by the City of Toronto. Visit datato.org and list or vote for the data you want to work with.
Firstly, let me state that I was not criticizing the City of Toronto with my comments. I think it's a wonderful thing that they are making data available for free and I know it was a not an easy task to accomplish following the CUPE strike this past summer. Secondly, I think it is crucial that developers and hackers have data to build tools, games, applications etc. These data are necessary to allow the creative juices to flow in the programming community. With their creativity and ingenuity, their access to these data can only make Toronto a better place. And since they are the ones who have asked for data, they should have access to what they want and need.
But, being from the academic sector, I could not help but feel disappointed in being one of the few asking for data necessary to do my work in serving the GIS and Data communities. Having worked with City of Toronto data for over ten years now, I know of a number of datasets that exist that are crucial to the academic work at the University of Toronto and elsewhere that are not in the current offering. I realize more datasets are forthcoming, but this is where my fear and pleas are based. I do not want to be the only one asking for the datasets I think are important to liberate because why would the City of Toronto take my word for it that the data are necessary? I want the communities I work with (ie. academics and GIS professionals) to help me by making their demands known.
A second fear that I have is that the freeing up of data will take on a rather washed delivery structure and format if we do not ask for the data in the formats we know they exist in. That is, that datasets will be distributed only in part or in formats unusable for most GIS work. See another post on this subject here. Not a day goes by that I do not get asked about land use data for Toronto. Data, by the way, that I receive four times per year from the City of Mississauga and in GIS format! When these for Toronto are released in the future, I have been told twice now by city officials, they will continue to be disseminated via the Official Plan in PDF format. As for zoning, they will only be disseminated through the web application toronto.ca/zoning. PDF and web maps are two methods of delivery that simply are unusable for analysis purposes.
And so again, I ask academics, GIS professionals, and librarians to please make your data needs known by the City of Toronto. Visit datato.org and list or vote for the data you want to work with.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Commentaire au sujet de la pseudo démocratisation des données
J'ai commencé à lire ton article fort intéressant sur ton blogue à propos des données de la Ville de Toronto et une de mes craintes c'est qu'on prétendre à la démocratisation des données géospatiales en nous permettant seulement une visualisation des données par l'entremise des services WEB comme les WMS et non pas la possibilité d'utiliser les données natives! Je crois qu'on assiste à une pseudo démocratisation. Il faudrait réaligner le pas qui vient d'être fait.
Est-ce que je me trompe?
Stéfano
Stéfano Biondo
Conseiller à la documentation
Information géospatiale et cartographie
Centre Géo/Stat
Université Laval
Pavillon Jean-Charles-Bonenfant
2345 allée des Bibliothèques
Local 4122
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
What about the Non-Spatial Data? - A response to the City of Toronto Open Data Initiative
This is an email message received from my colleague, with her permission I am posting on this blog.
Subject: you ask what's missing from this site
I have browsed through the data catalogue at
http://www.toronto.ca/open/index.htm
with some interest. Here follow three comments re what's missing:
1. Any indication of the availability of prior editions of the datasets
(certainly none listed for the files I looked at). Eg the child services
file -- October 2009 is the date ascribed. What was the situation in
January 2009? What about October 2008? How has the recession affected the
availability of child services? How does seasonal part-time employment
affect the demand for and availability of child services?
The place of worship file is dated 2006. Are there no prior editions of
this file? What about later versions of the file? Places of worship are
built, repurposed or destroyed (eg by fire) over time. But changes over
time cannot be studied without data over time.
Ie, what happens when a a later version of a file becomes available? Is
the prior version replaced, or does is still remain available? If not, why
not? If it is not available on-line, to whom does one turn for copies of
prior editions?
2. Any statement of a preservation policy. What procedures are in place to
manage the preservation of these data sets over time? What department is
responsible for the long-term preservation of these data? How frequently
are the data sets provided to whoever is responsible, after what period of
time? Software dependent formats are one of the first things to 'kill' a
dataset, once older formats can no longer be read by current software.
Access should not be mistaken for preservation.
3. Almost all data sets currently listed are spatially referenced data
sets, such as ESRI shapefiles, etc.What about other data, such as
anonymized microdata collected in the course of surveys conducted by the
City? For example, the Toronto employment survey, surveys conducted by the
TTC, by GO Transit, by the TDSB, attempts to survey the homeless etc. --
should these not also be included? The microdata from the Toronto
employment survey could, for example, be subjected to additional
statistical analyses than the simple descriptive statistics made available
in the reports available on the web site.
I am sure there are many other surveys that are conducted eg by City
Planning Division's Policy & Research section of which I am not even
aware, but which could be used for secondary statistical analysis so as to
improve our understanding of how the community functions, and the
informing of policy decisions. They may or may not be interesting from the
point of view of spatial analysis (GIS) but are certainly interesting for
other types of analysis which do not involve spatial relationships.
Nonetheless, they should still be made available.
There are software solutions available that can, for example, present data
in a fashion that on the one hand supports the generation of descriptive
as well as inferential statistics from microdata, while on the other hand
ensuring that eg no table cell contains less than 5 (or some other
selected number) cases, so as to ensure privacy and confidentiality of
respondents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Laine G.M. Ruus E-mail: laine.ruus@utoronto.ca
Data Library Service dlsg@chass.utoronto.ca
for a related post, see http://maplib.blogspot.com/2009/11/opendatato-crucial-elements-missing.html
for a related post, see http://maplib.blogspot.com/2009/11/opendatato-crucial-elements-missing.html
Crucial Elements Missing in Toronto's Open Data Initiative
The City of Toronto has followed the lead of Vancouver, and some cities in the U.S. and released a portion of their data for free to the public. The announcement was made at Toronto's Innovations Showcase by Mayor David Miller. While many would argue the offerings are slim; and it is true that for someone who uses GIS data on a daily basis, this is somewhat of a wanting list for my purposes. But, at the very least it is a very good start toward the process of liberating data, and crucial to much GIS work at the University of Toronto and elsewhere. At the very least, the city must be commended for their huge effort. For a list of datasets now available restriction free, see http://toronto.ca/open/
The problem as I see it is not the initial list of datasets offered or the City of Toronto will to liberate data, instead it is the lack of involvement by the GIS and academic community in the process. Hackers and developers were and are plenty making their voices heard, but they are not looking for the same things we are in the academic and GIS communities. They are looking to build applications and cool things to map. What we need in the GIS and academic community is of course quite different. We want to know how do dataset work against and with one another, and we want to know how the geography these have in common factors in. We do not want to just know about the "where?", but want to know "why", and "what are the factors?", and we want to test out theories. In other words, we want data for analysis.
While there is nothing wrong with building apps and mapping out cool things, what is wrong with this picture is that the City of Toronto will most likely develop a view that demand for their data is from the developer sector only. Already, many of the datasets offered are at what I like to call the "lowest-common denominator" level. Two cases in point; when I put a post in to their new request system at datato.org for high-resolution orthophotography, someone replied to me that there is already a Web Mapping Service (WMS) of their latest air photos. As we all know a WMS is fine for a backdrop, but pretty much useless for GIS analysis. A second example is the TTC data. The TTC holds their bus and subway routes in GIS formats. Data that they have kindly provided the University of Toronto Libraries for free for a number of years. But what is available on toronto.ca/open is only a spit out from GIS data into text files. Yes, text files! Anyone wanting to do GIS on them has to then rebuild them as GIS files.
Over the years I have requested and received (in exchange for money and a signed license agreement, and sometimes not) many other datasets for the University of Toronto community from different City of Toronto departments. What we have received has always been high-quality GIS data. But now what should I expect from the city when I request data? Will I have to just be happy with the data that's online? Will I have to keep battling for data that governments deem already liberated such as the data on the City of Toronto's zoning web application toronto.ca/zoning; or their land use data in PDF format from their online Official Plan? Both great to have as reference, but useless for analysis.
The City of Toronto is not the only government that will think the "lowest-common denominator" method of data delivery is good enough if our voices are not heard. In a recent meeting with the Government of Ontario's main GIS unit, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), a senior manager basically told the group of librarians assembled that WMS was a large part of the way they would like to distribute their data to its users.
So, GIS users and academics, make your voices heard if you want to be part of the process of liberating data in Canada. Unless they know we want not just data for data's sake, but data for specific GIS applications and analysis, we are still going to have to battle governments to provide us with proper access.
Governments are in a good mood right now as witnessed by the Toronto and Vancouver announcements, and of course the Canadian Federal Government's two free data delivery web pages geobase.ca and geogratis.ca. It is the time to strike while the iron is hot. If you're a GIS professional or academic who feels they need better data access, let your voice be heard by submitting comments and suggestions at datato.org, by email via opendata@toronto.ca or join the group discussion list from the same page. If Toronto ends up understanding what is needed and acts on it, other governments may do the same. Do not think the City of Toronto did not have a close look at what Vancouver did or that Vancouver did not look at other open data initiatives in the U.S. before delivering their data for free on the web.
Marcel Fortin
Geographic Information Systems and Map Librarian
University of Toronto
PS - see also this article in the Globe and Mail
The problem as I see it is not the initial list of datasets offered or the City of Toronto will to liberate data, instead it is the lack of involvement by the GIS and academic community in the process. Hackers and developers were and are plenty making their voices heard, but they are not looking for the same things we are in the academic and GIS communities. They are looking to build applications and cool things to map. What we need in the GIS and academic community is of course quite different. We want to know how do dataset work against and with one another, and we want to know how the geography these have in common factors in. We do not want to just know about the "where?", but want to know "why", and "what are the factors?", and we want to test out theories. In other words, we want data for analysis.
While there is nothing wrong with building apps and mapping out cool things, what is wrong with this picture is that the City of Toronto will most likely develop a view that demand for their data is from the developer sector only. Already, many of the datasets offered are at what I like to call the "lowest-common denominator" level. Two cases in point; when I put a post in to their new request system at datato.org for high-resolution orthophotography, someone replied to me that there is already a Web Mapping Service (WMS) of their latest air photos. As we all know a WMS is fine for a backdrop, but pretty much useless for GIS analysis. A second example is the TTC data. The TTC holds their bus and subway routes in GIS formats. Data that they have kindly provided the University of Toronto Libraries for free for a number of years. But what is available on toronto.ca/open is only a spit out from GIS data into text files. Yes, text files! Anyone wanting to do GIS on them has to then rebuild them as GIS files.
Over the years I have requested and received (in exchange for money and a signed license agreement, and sometimes not) many other datasets for the University of Toronto community from different City of Toronto departments. What we have received has always been high-quality GIS data. But now what should I expect from the city when I request data? Will I have to just be happy with the data that's online? Will I have to keep battling for data that governments deem already liberated such as the data on the City of Toronto's zoning web application toronto.ca/zoning; or their land use data in PDF format from their online Official Plan? Both great to have as reference, but useless for analysis.
The City of Toronto is not the only government that will think the "lowest-common denominator" method of data delivery is good enough if our voices are not heard. In a recent meeting with the Government of Ontario's main GIS unit, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR), a senior manager basically told the group of librarians assembled that WMS was a large part of the way they would like to distribute their data to its users.
So, GIS users and academics, make your voices heard if you want to be part of the process of liberating data in Canada. Unless they know we want not just data for data's sake, but data for specific GIS applications and analysis, we are still going to have to battle governments to provide us with proper access.
Governments are in a good mood right now as witnessed by the Toronto and Vancouver announcements, and of course the Canadian Federal Government's two free data delivery web pages geobase.ca and geogratis.ca. It is the time to strike while the iron is hot. If you're a GIS professional or academic who feels they need better data access, let your voice be heard by submitting comments and suggestions at datato.org, by email via opendata@toronto.ca or join the group discussion list from the same page. If Toronto ends up understanding what is needed and acts on it, other governments may do the same. Do not think the City of Toronto did not have a close look at what Vancouver did or that Vancouver did not look at other open data initiatives in the U.S. before delivering their data for free on the web.
Marcel Fortin
Geographic Information Systems and Map Librarian
University of Toronto
PS - see also this article in the Globe and Mail
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