Opinion: Releasing open data on road collisions could save lives | Edmonton Journal

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-03-04

Summary:

"I dream of building a province-wide map of collisions on our streets and roads because it could save lives. Are specific intersections or stretches of highway more prone to collisions? What type of collisions occur there, and when? Are there road design flaws we need to fix? I want to know.

But to answer these questions I need open data, and that’s the problem. Alberta’s Ministry of Transportation releases collision data in ways that prevent me and others from working with it. I commend the ministry for publishing their reports annually. But the ministry releases data in a PDF format, and this severely limits how useful the data can be. This is more than simple frustration from a guy who loves to work with data. It has deep public policy implications.

First some background. Open data are data released in an open, non-restrictive format like Microsoft Excel, rather than a closed format like a PDF. Data published in a PDF are “locked” in that the numbers cannot easily be analyzed or visualized in a new format such as a map. The PDF format is a barrier to someone like me running additional analysis or making data visualizations.

Why make data open? Well, imagine if skilled citizens were able to look at the entire traffic collision dataset for Alberta. That could lead to new insights and positive changes. It has already happened in Edmonton....

The notion of open data can only succeed within a community of users, and Edmonton has a robust community. This is not limited to Paths of People. Other groups include Beta City YEG (they host a monthly meetup), and the City of Edmonton’s Open Data team.

Several members of this community have created maps and apps with existing open-data sets, too. TruHome, a local real estate company, built an interactive map of Edmonton’s building ages that’s beautiful and useful for understanding built history. And Trevor Prentice, a local tech nerd with a background in physics, built a map that ranked each of Edmonton’s 387 neighborhoods using parameters, such as proximity to schools, grocery stores and transit...."

Link:

http://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-why-make-provincial-transportation-data-open-it-could-save-lives

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.cities oa.canada oa.psi oa.government oa.formats oa.reuse oa.interoperability oa.recommendations oa.security oa.best_practices oa.citizen_science oa.ssh oa.data

Date tagged:

03/04/2018, 14:01

Date published:

03/04/2018, 09:03