Essex County Launches Open Data Portal

Essex County has launched an Open Data portal to increase transparency, boost community engagement and promote research and innovation.

The Open Data catalogue, which is accessible online, has eight categories of data ranging from traffic volume to maps and imagery along with 20 data sets that can be downloaded for free and republished according to the terms of an open license agreement.

Open Data is “machine-readable” data that is made available with limited restrictions, and in multiple formats, for residents, researchers, businesses, academics and agencies to reuse and repurpose in innovative and unanticipated ways. The data is assessed before being released to ensure there are no legal or privacy concerns associated with making it public.

Users of the Open Data portal can browse, search, preview and download a variety of spatial and tabular data. Users can download the data in a variety of formats including ESRI shapefile, spreadsheet, KML or API.