Good places to harvest data from, whether for Wiki-filling or other projects (or just for fun).

Wish List

What would you like to see released or collected? We're keeping a list here.

• Area public playground locations and photos (for the Playgrounds page)
• An officially supported release of downtown Ann Arbor real time parking data (as seen here: http://www.a2dda.org/map/AADDACount.json )
• Public drinking fountains, especially those with bottle fills and dog bowls. U of Michigan bottle fill locations are a start.
• Restaurant inspections, which are currently provided to the Ann Arbor News

Population Data

• American Factfinder - US Census online interface: http://factfinder2.census.gov/
• SEMCOG - current population estimates: http://www.semcog.org/Data/bycommunity.cfm

Elections

• Washtenaw County
  • Election results index: http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/clerk_register/elections/election_results
  • Campaign Finance documents database: http://campaign.ewashtenaw.org/
• State of Michigan campaign finance search: http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-1633_8723_8751---,00.html

Assessing and Tax Data

Many communities have their assessor's databases online, including assessed value, recent sales history, tax burdens, and images. If you have to, for example, combat the latest urban legend about the Fleetwood Diner being sold for condos, here's where to start.

• Ann Arbor: City assessor
• Chelsea: http://chelseacity.is.bsasoftware.com/
• Dexter: http://dextervillage.is.bsasoftware.com/
• Webster Township: http://webstertwp.is.bsasoftware.com/
• Ypsilanti: http://cityofypsilanti.com/features/assessment_tax
• Ypsilanti Township: http://ypsilantitwp.is.bsasoftware.com/

Traffic Data

• Washtenaw Area Transit Study - traffic counts for nearly any road in Washtenaw they've been collected for: http://miwats.managepoint.net/
• SEMCOG
  • traffic counts for surrounding Counties: http://www.semcog.org/Data/Apps/trafficcounts.cfm
  • traffic crashes by community/intersection/cause: http://www.semcog.org/Data/Apps/crash.cfm
  • interactive transportation data map: http://www.semcog.org/Data/Maps/roads.map.cfm
• Michigan Traffic Crash Facts - 2004-2008 crash reporting statewide, with accident reports and statistics plus a query tool for custom reports

Transit Data

• Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (in GTFS format):
  http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/ann-arbor-transportation-authority/
• University of Michigan Transit Services  (in GTFS format)
  http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/university-of-michigan-transit-services/
• Detroit (in GTFS format)
  http://www.gtfs-data-exchange.com/agency/detroit-department-of-transportation/

Trees

The City of Ann Arbor has a public tree inventory from 2009 online: http://data.a2gov.org/feeds/GIS/Trees/a2tree.kmz (KML/KMZ)

FallingFruit.org is a web application that uses Ann Arbor's tree data to show the location of approximately 17,000 trees planted by the city on curbsides and in parks.  The information provided includes links to the USDA and Wikipedia for each species.  

State of Michigan Public Data Sources

Ann Arbor Data Catalog

A variety of municipal and county data in KML format, as well as some PDF reports.

Public Mapping

MapWashtenaw, a joint venture between the Washtenaw County and the City of Ann Arbor provides a county-wide base map of roads and property parcels along with updated and historical aerial photography, topography accurate to within a few feet, and more. 

University of Michigan

The Michigan Almanac is updated every 6 months by UM's Office of Budget & Planning, with a wide range of data: http://obp.umich.edu/michigan-almanac/

Pipelines

Data about where gas, oil, and other petroleum products pipelines run is provided by PHMSA, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The National Pipeline Mapping System allows you to view maps of where pipelines run, one county at a time. 

U. S. Congress

OpenCongress.org - Top online resource for keeping tabs on legislation, lawmakers and the workings of Capitol Hill.

Related Information:

The organization Code for America who frequently hosts teams at National Day of Civic Hacking has a substantial number of projects in this space that can be forked, and many of those projects have created data standards that have since been leveraged in several communities.  Rather than reinventing the wheel in the pursuit of a good idea, check both the list of projects and here for data standards to see if someone else has already done some of the heavy lifting.  

• Existing Apps (on Github):
  • Code for America - http://codeforamerica.github.io/
• Data Standards:
  • Code for America - http://codeforamerica.org/civic-data-standards/
  • Civic Commons - http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Data_Standards