OpenDataPhilly: new updates include bicycle rack data, Septa API, city spatial data [UPDATED]

A map of bicycle rack locations, as provided by developer Mark Headd.

Several new data sets, including bicycle rack locations, have been added to OpenDataPhilly in recent months, says Deb Boyer, the Azavea project manager at the GIS development shop Azavea that built the searchable resource of civic data.

Some of the updates were motivated by requests sent into the OpenDataRace, which Technically Philly covered previously and, full disclosure, helped launch.

Here are some of the most recent updates:

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OpenDataRace: Vote for what City of Philadelphia data set and local nonprofit you want to support

The OpenDataRace, a contest to show support for the release of City of Philadelphia data and the nonprofit missions that need it, has launched open voting. Technically Philly first reported on the contest here.

With an OpenDataPhilly.org registration, users can vote for a single data set — of 21 selected from more than 30 nominated — once a week through the month of October. At the end of voting, three small cash prizes will be given to the nonprofits that nominated the top data sets, and contest organizers will work with the city to have that data released.

VOTE FOR YOUR DATA SET HERE.

The OpenDataRace organizers are Azavea, which built the site, NPower, the William Penn Foundation and, full disclosure, Technically Philly.

OpenDataPhilly.org source code released

Philadelphia’s open municipal data portal is, transparently enough, now available as an open source download.

GIS firm Azavea announced this morning that it has made available the source code for OpenDataPhilly.org on Github.

The organization is providing the code, written in Django, Python and PostgreSQL, and has renamed the source more generally as the Open Data Catalog, to empower other municipal organizations to create their own central locations for data, according to a press release.

OpenDataPhilly.org launched in April during Philly Tech Week, one of the week’s signature events. It currently houses more than 100 datasets from around the region, and exists as an open catalog of information that anyone can submit to. See our full coverage of the open data initiative. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is an OpenDataPhilly partner organization.]

According to a statement from Azavea founder Robert Cheetham, the company wants to “encourage organizations or municipalities to build their own catalogs in order to enable technology communities throughout the world to transform rows of text, numbers and shapes into applications and visualizations.”

Add that to Azavea’s other open source projects which are available, including OpenTreeMap.