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Open and linked data

What is open data?

Open data is all about 'opening up' non-personal data held by the government and making it freely available to you.

This idea is underpinned by the philosophy that data generated or collected by organisations in the public sector should belong to the taxpayers, wherever financially feasible and where releasing it won’t violate any laws or rights to privacy (either for citizens or government staff).

Open data is information that:

  • is free to use for any legal purpose under the Open Government Licence
  • contains no personal data and meets Data Protection Act legislation
  • is published in a form that makes it easy to manipulate in software like mobile apps.

A list of bus stops, details of train timetables or information about healthcare providers in your area are examples of open data.

When the data is structured in a certain way, enabling it to be combined with other data to create something new, it becomes known as linked data. For example, combining a list of bus stops with postcode data to create a map of bus stops near your home.

The aim of open and linked data is to allow you to view information, and re-use it in useful ways which can help increase access to public services for everyone.

Our open data
 

Our catalogue of open data sets:

Advice centre open data set

This data set contains information about our advice centre.

Air quality monitoring stations

This data set contains information about air quality monitoring stations in Belfast.

This data set contains information on air quality monitoring stations in Belfast including location, height and pollutants checked for. This does not include air quality data. This is available from Northern Ireland Air website. 

Notes

One node called station for each monitoring station. Location info in Irish Grid.
Data provided under Open Government Licence.

Belfast Bike hire stations

This data set contains information on the locations of the Belfast Bike hire stations.

Belfast Bike hire, rentals and returns

This data set contains information on rentals and returns by hire station, grouped by month and year.

Bottle banks open data set

This data set contains information about our bottle banks.

Bowling pavilions open data set

This data set contains information about our bowling pavilions.

Car parks open data set

This data set contains information about our car park locations and car park tariffs.

Car park locations

  • Data items: name, address, postcode, non-designated bays, X coordinates, Y coordinates, latitude, longitude, blue badge bays, family friendly bays, e-car bays, tariff, charged hours
  • Download car park locations data set (CSV - 8KB)

Car park tariffs

  • Data items: name, tariff, 0 to 1 hours, 1 to 2 hours, 2 to 3 hours, 3 to 4 hours, 4 to 5 hours, 5 to 6 hours, 6 to 7 hours, 7 to 8 hours, 8+ hours, monthly season ticket
  • Download car park tariffs data set (CSV - 4KB)

Cemeteries open data set

This data set contains information about our cemeteries.

City parks open data set

This data set contains information about our parks.

Civic amenity sites open data set

This data set contains information about our civic amenity sites.

Community centres open data set

This data set contains information about our community centres.

Council properties data set

This data set contains information about council buildings.

Notes
One node called property will exist for each building. Co-ordinates are in Irish Grid format. If UPRN (pointer unique property reference number) does not exist, it will be set to zero.

Food premises hygiene data set

This data set contains information about food premises, such as restaurants and takeaways, in Belfast. This includes the name and address of premises as well as their food hygiene inspection rating between 1 and 5.

Notes
One node called <restaurants> exists for each food premises in the dataset. Co-ordinates are in latitude and longitude format. The X coordinate and Y coordinate elements give the location in Irish Grid format.

Leisure centres open data set

This data set contains information about the leisure centres we own.

Play centres open data set

This data set contains information about our play centres.

Playgrounds open data set

This data set contains information about our playgrounds.

Public toilets open data set

This data set contains information about our public toilets.

Recycling centres open data set

This data set contains information about our recycling centres.

Sport pitches and playing fields open data set

This data set contains information about our sports pitches and playing fields.

Trees data set

This data set contains information about the trees located on Belfast streets.

  • Data items: type of tree, species type, species, age, description, surround, vigour, condition, diameter, spread, X coordinates, Y coordinates, longitude, latitude, tree tag, height
  • Download tree data set (XML)
  • Download tree data set (CSV)

Notes
One node called <belfasttrees> exists for each tree in the dataset. Co-ordinates are in Irish Grid and latitude/longtitude formats. The date tag contains the date the dataset was created.

If there is a data set not in the list, that you would like us to consider making available, please email opendata@belfastcity.gov.uk

Other sources of open data

Find open data has open information about Northern Ireland including:

  • employment surveys
  • hospital waiting lists
  • births, deaths and marriages statistics.

Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency also have datasets covering:

  • crime and justice
  • population and migration
  • labour market.

For more information about open data in Northern Ireland, visit OpenData NI

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