Open Data in Vancouver

Some months ago, a co-worker pointed me towards VanMap, an online tool that provides fine detail on the City of Vancouver: property lines, zoning information, sewer mains, etc. The down-side to this site is that it only functions in Windows and that the underlying data isn’t directly available.

Fortunately, there’s talk of opening the city’s data in a permissive licensing model like the Creative Commons. Andrea Reimer‘s talk this evening about the progress towards that goal was informative, considering I wasn’t aware the problem was being worked on.

Brought up during this talk was the September 16th Hackathon. I’m not 100% clear yet on what the focus will be, but it’s there for the curious. One of their previous projects is VanTrash, which is a neat tool that can remind you when your trash pickup is. Pretty sweet, eh?

Update

Looks like Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue is up in beta form. Go take a look for it is super.