{"id":101,"date":"2017-09-26T13:03:44","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T17:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2017-10-30T17:26:27","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T21:26:27","slug":"how-i-used-open-data-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/?p=101","title":{"rendered":"How I Used Open Data this Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submitted by: Kirk MacLeod, Open Data Team Lead, Open Government Program<\/strong><\/p>\n

As someone who has worked in Open Government since 2014, one of the questions I’m often asked is to give examples of real world scenarios in which open data can be used by the average person in a day-to-day way. A really great example occurred this summer when my wife and I decided to take the kids camping.<\/p>\n

I’ve been camping since I was a kid and one of my least favorite aspects of camping happens when my campsite has an active fire ban. Yes, you can make s’mores in a pan on a stove, but it definitely lacks in authenticity.<\/p>\n

So step one for any camping trip for me is to check for any active fire bans in the province. Luckily for me, Alberta Parks has a great map<\/a> available that displays this information.<\/p>\n

Next up was potential wildfires, which is never anything you want to have connected to a camping trip. The Alberta Open Government Portal<\/a> includes a great resource, the Alberta Wildfire Status Map<\/a> that shows exactly where in the province current wildfire situations exist.<\/p>\n

Finally, as a long-time asthmatic, I’m a real stickler for air quality, and the portal has a pretty great app for that – the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI Canada) app<\/a>, which can give you an overview of exactly what kind of air quality to expect throughout the country.<\/p>\n

Now I realize that my methods are a little old school, and if I were a programmer I’m sure I could have done a mash-up of these three resources into something really neat. But all I did was print out maps from all three resources and then simply held them up to a light! This year Slave Lake Provincial Park was the clear winner in late August and let me tell you, using freely available data to ensure a great trip was almost as great as those s’mores (almost).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Submitted by: Kirk MacLeod, Open Data Team Lead, Open Government Program As someone who has worked in Open Government since 2014, one of the questions I’m often asked is to give examples of real world scenarios in which open data can be used by the average person in a day-to-day way. A really great example […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-data"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/open.alberta.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}