A Guide to Local Cleveland Open Data
What is open civic data? Open Civic Data (generally just referred as Open Data) is quantative data about a municipality’s functions, qualities, services, its people, and physical infrastructure. The Sunlight Foundation and Open Knowledge International’s Open Data Handbook are two sources that explain more.
If you want to do anything useful with the data, the data has to be “open”: able to be obtained freely and in bulk (no saving a file six hundred times) , “machine-readable” - in a file format that is friendly to work with and whose content can be deciphered by computer programs easily and to be legally able to use and share with minimal or no restrictions.
When we want data about our city, where do we start? First, ASK the agency that you think would have the data (Advice on that in a later post).
The US Census is a comprehensive source of data about our city specifically on our population and demographics.
Some cities across the USA have dedicated websites (data portals). Cleveland got one in 2024 and can be your first stop to look! Then, check out the different entities listed who have have aggregated or collected data or acts as a steward for this data and may publish it themselves.
geospatial/geographic:
https://data.clevelandohio.gov/
- The official City of Cleveland Data Portal. Launched in April 2024, the data portal is the most comprehensive source of data in the City of Cleveland and includes Visualizations and Dashboards are available as well as the actual raw datasets.
https://github.com/skorasaurus/dtparking
- downtown Cleveland car parking available to the public; Will Skora from Open Cleveland and the OpenStreetMap community create and maintain it. It does not include curbside parking.
Cuyahoga County Open Data
https://data-cuyahoga.opendata.arcgis.com/
- Cuyahoga County geospatial data (roads, railroads, addresses, parcels; natural resources like streams)
NeoCando
http://neocando.case.edu/
- Demographics, crime, property data, census information for cuyahoga county; also property transactions
- Requires registration
Transportation:
RTA
http://www.riderta.com/developers
- Bus and subway routes and locations of stops; in GTFS format;
Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA)
https://gis.noaca.org/Portal/
- Data on Transportation, Freight on highways, Bicycle Infrastructure, and Urban Planning
- Data Accessible by clicking on pie-chart icon on right side of screen
Elections:
Cuyahoga County Board of Elections
https://boe.cuyahogacounty.us
- Campaign finance reports available in PDF format
Health:
Healthy NEO
https://www.healthyneo.org
- Health data for Cleveland and Cuyahoga county
Other:
For all of Ohio:
Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program (OGRIP)
http://ogrip.oit.ohio.gov
- State-wide geographic data (roads, railroads, addresses, parcels)
- May not be the most up to date, search the particular county’s GIS website for an updated data set.
National:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
https://data.noaa.gov/onestop/#/
- Weather, climate, satellites, fisheries, coasts, and oceans
Former National Climatic Data Center (NCDC)
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
- Climate and historical weather data and information
- Now affiliated with NOAA
Tips:
Still unsure where it is or can’t find it?
- Ask us by opencleveland@gmail.com or on twitter @opencleveland and we'll try put you in touch with who has it.
- ask your local librarian at your local public library. :)
We’ll try to keep this up to date and encourage you to share by email (opencleveland@gmail.com)
Next step: How to ask for the data if it’s not publicly available.