Yesterday was a pretty good day for Open Data in Alberta. First, the City of Calgary went live with a Socrata version of their Open Data portal. Previously they had been running on some sort of Microsoft SharePoint (my guess) site, and it was not a particularly pretty or useful thing. Really looking forward to working with their data in this new format, and with sweet APIs.
Second up, the announcement of Open Data Areas Alberta (ODAA). From their landing page:
Open Data Areas Alberta (ODAA) is a new undertaking being spearheaded by Alberta Data Partnerships to put extensive data in the hands of those who can use it. Datasets from six key rural areas across Alberta is available for no cost to inspired entrepreneurs, SMEs and creative problem solvers. These will include earth observation, remote sensing, geospatial data, environmental data, and social and economic datasets from private industry and government.
Those six areas include Beaver Hills, Fox Creek, Taber, Fort McMurray, RMH Sylvan and Utikuma Lake. It's good, current (for the most part) data, too! Want 17GB of orthophotos of the Fort McMurray Oilsands? Here you go. Wonder why Taber grows such great corn? Maybe the Agricultural Regions of Alberta Soil Information Database (AGRASID) will tell the tale.