Use of Open Data in Hong Kong

Use of Open Data in Hong Kong
Sammy Fung
sammy.hk
Incu-Lab ICE in StartMeUpHK - Open Data Initiative Gathering
2013/12/04
http://slidesha.re/1cleS2y

We want a better life with
public data.

We want a easier way to
access the public data.

Agenda
●

What is Open Data ?

●

Use of Open Source Software in web crawling.

●

Starting new Open Source project hk0weather
to create Open Weather Data.

Sammy Fung
●

Software Developer
–

to use and develop open source sofware.

–

Perl → PHP → Python.

–

interests on Data Mining / Web Crawling.

–

own a startup of web and mobile technology.

Sammy Fung
●

15+ years in Open Source Communities.
–

Founding Chairman, Hong Kong Linux User Group.

–

Founding Chairman, Open Source Hong Kong.

–

Member, GNOME Asia committee.

–

Mozilla Representative

–

Member, program committee at COSCUP
●

Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Developers.

●

Largest open source conference in Taiwan.

Open Data
Three Laws of Open Government Data by David Eaves.
1.If it can't be spidered or indexed, it doesn't exist.
2.If it isn't available in open and machine readable format, it
can't engage.
3.If a legal framework doesn't allow it to be repurposed, it
doesn't empower.
http://eaves.ca/2009/09/30/three-law-of-open-government-data/

Open Data
●

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web.
–

5stardata.info

–

5 star deployment scheme of Open Data.

* One Star - Open Data
1.make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format) under an
open license.
2.make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of image
scan of a table)
3.use non-proprietary formats (e.g., CSV instead of Excel)
4.use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff.
5.link your data to other data to provide context.
5stardata.info by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web.

** Two Star - Open Data
open license.
scan of a table)

*** Three Star - Open Data
open license.
scan of a table)

**** Four Star - Open Data
open license.
scan of a table)

***** Five Star - Open Data
open license.
scan of a table)

Open Data in Hong Kong
●

Data.One
–

http://www.gov.hk/en/theme/psi

–

released on 2011/3/31.

–

First App Competition on Data.One
●

Call for Submission now till 2014/02/28.

Weather Information in Hong Kong
●

Hong Kong Observatory
–

Hourly Hong Kong Weather Report

–

Regional Weather in Hong Kong (10 min updates)

–

Weather Forecast and Weekly Weather Forecast

–

Typhoon Report and Forecast

Weather at Data.One
●

●

I posted a blog 'Progress of Open
Government Data in Hong Kong' on
2013/01/17.
Weather at Data.One provides 7 dataset URLs,
returns RSS (XML) format (Eng/TChi/SChi)
–

One word: Useless.

–

Data.One dataset (RSS) is completely different
with HKO own paid service (XML).

Weather at Data.One
●

Example - Current local weather report:

●

Plain text report in RSS.

●

Difference to quote report content:
–
–

●

Website: a pair of HTML tags, eg. <PRE>....</PRE>.
Data.One: a pair of RSS description tags,
<description>....</description>.

Other weather data is missing, eg. Regional
temperture updates per each 12 mins.

Weather at Data.One
●

●

●

Weather at Data.One is 'report' but not 'data'.
Weather RSS is already released by HKO
before launch of Data.One.
Technically, json/xml format is better
readable by computer programs.

Data.One
●

In November 2013, 43 datasets are available.
–

JSON/XML = 18

–

RSS = 10

–

XLS = 6

–

CSV = 4

–

JPG/PNG = 3

–

HTML/MDB = 2

Data.One
●

JSON/XML (18 datasets)
–

Air Pollution.
●

Past 24-hour Air Pollution Index from stations.

–

Approved Charitable Fund-raising Activities

–

Restaurant and Food Licences.

–

Details of facility locations.

–

Reward Notices from Police Force.

–

Marine Traffic (Arrival/Departure).

–

Traffic Speed and special news.

–

EventHK information.

Data.One
●

RSS (10 datasets)
–

Weather Information (7 datasets)

–

Beach Water Quality (1 datasets)

–

Current Air Pollution Index range and forecase (2
datasets)

Data.One
●

JPG/PNG (3 datasets)
–

Exhibition gallery of government building
projects.

–

Speed map panels.

–

Traffic snapshot images.

Data.One
●

CSV
–
–

Locations of Public Facility and GovWifi

–
●

Past Record of Air Pollution Index
Marine Shipping directory of HK

HTML
–

●

HTML version of Marine Traffic.

XLS, MDB
–

2011 Population Census.

–

Property Market Statistics.

–

Monthly Digested Stats and Registers of Auth Persons from Building Dept.

–

Routes and fares of public transport.

Data.One
●

Many departments does not release their useful data, and
release current information available on their website.
–

●

Few of them keep available open data in their own.

Most of them does not understand what is 'real' open data.
–
–

Open data format insteads of proprietary data format.

–
●

Data insteads of Information.
Useful of data.

Some departments should manage their open data in better
data structure.

Legco Meeting Minutes
and Voting Results

Legco Meeting Minutes
and Voting Results
●

●

●

In October 2013, LegCo start to publish voting
results of House Committe in XML.
It is not a part of Data.One project.
My open source software on LegCo vote
result XML:
–

http://github.com/sammyfung/legcovotes

Digital21 Strategy
Public Consultation Document
(G) Public Sector Information (PSI) as Default
"34. Through different channels (like press releases, publications, websites, etc.), the
Government releases a lot of information in different areas. However, most of such
information can only be read but cannot be used. In view of the immense benefits of
widening access to PSI for free and easy re-use, we propose to make all Government
information released for public consumption machine-readable by default. Where
appropriate, datasets will be released with application programming interfaces (APIs),
providing predefined functions to make their retrieval easier."
(G) 廣泛提供公共資料
"34. 政府透過不同途徑 ( 例如新聞稿、出版物、網站等 ) 發放大量不同範疇的資料。然而 , 這些資
料大都只可供閱讀而不能使用。有見開放公共資料以供免費再用可帶來巨大效益 , 我們建議所有
開放予公眾使用的政府資料都須以數碼格式編製。在適用情況下 , 資料發布時會同時推出應用程
式界面 , 以便提供預設功能 , 讓公眾輕易地檢索資料。 "

Digital21 Strategy
"33. PSI datasets can be used and meshed together to create innovative new applications, as
demonstrated by the creative and useful products and services developed from PSI in Hong Kong
and around the world. For example, using PSI datasets on traffic snapshot images, a number of
mobile apps have been developed to provide real-time traffic situation for users to avoid traffic jams
in planning their traffic routes. Experience from other developed economies shows that widening
access to PSI datasets can open up lucrative business opportunities and bring social benefits. By
tapping the creativity of the community and entrepreneurs, the use of PSI can lead to positive social
outcomes. For instance, in some cities in the United States, application of PSI on hygiene inspections
has led to a significant drop in food poisoning incidents."

Digital21 Strategy
"33. 由本港及世界各地利用公共資料所開發的實用創意產品及服
務所見 , 公共資料可個別及混合使用 , 以開發創新的應用程式。例
如 , 現時已有多個利用交通情況快拍圖像的公共資料開發的流動應
用程式 , 以提供實時交通情況資料 , 讓使用者計劃行車路線 , 從而
避開交通擠塞情況。根據其他經濟體系的經驗 , 開放公共資料 , 供
大眾廣為使用 , 可開拓有利可圖的商機 , 並為社會帶來禆益。我們
可藉着開放公共資料 , 借助市民及企業家的創意來造福社會。舉例
來說 , 在美國一些城市 , 有關衞生檢查的公共資料在開放使用後 ,
食物中毒事故宗數大幅減少。 "

Digital21 Strategy
"35. Apart from Government data, there are vast amounts of PSI handled,
collected and disseminated by public organisations, which are equally useful
for the development of innovative services and products. Therefore, we
propose to encourage public organisations (e.g. public utilities and transport
operators) to release data owned by them in machine-readable format."
"35. 除了政府資料外 , 本港亦備有大量經公共機構處理、收集及發放的公共資料 ,
這些資料對開發創新服務及產品同樣有用。因此 , 我們建議鼓勵公共機構 ( 例如公
用事業及運輸機構 ) 發放以數碼格式編製的資料。 "

Open Data is important to citizens.

User of Open Source
Software in web
crawling

Web Scraping
●

a computer software technique of extracting
information from websites. (Wikipedia)

●

for business, hobbies, research purposes.

Web Scraping
●

Look for right URLs to scrap.

●

Look for right content from webpages.

●

Saving data into data store.

●

When to run the web scraping program ?

Use of Open Source Software in
Web Crawling
●

●

Use Open Source Tools to collect useful and
meaningful machine-readable data.
Doesn't need to wait provider to release data
in machine-readable format.

Open Source Tools
●

Python programming lanugage

●

with Regular Expression library

●

Scrapy web crawling framework

Why python + scrapy ?
●

●

python: my current favourite programming
language for few years.
scrapy: web crawling framework written in
Python.

What is Scrapy ?
●

●

An open source web scraping framework for
Python.
Scrapy is a fast high-level screen scraping and
web crawling framework, used to crawl
websites and extract structured data from
their pages. It can be used for a wide range of
purposes, from data mining to monitoring
and automated testing.

Scrapy Features
●

define data you want to scrapy

●

write spider to extract data

●

Built-in: selecting and extracting data from HTML
and XML

●

Built-in: JSON, CSV, XML output

●

Interactive shell console

●

Built-in: web service, telnet console, logging

●

Others

Programme List of Paid TVs in 2004

Programme List of Paid TVs in 2004
●

I want to know live football match was
showing on which channel.

●

Paid TV web site = M$ + IIS + ASP + Flash

●

Slow....... Very Slow...... Extremely Slow!

●

Couldn't connect at any peak hours!

●

Wrote my first web crawler in PHP in 2004.

Public Transportation in 2006-2010
●

Kowloon Motor Bus (KMB)
–

●

No map view for a bus route

Public Transportation Enquiry System (PTES)
–

Exteremly Poor, Ugly (or much worse) map UI on
PTES.

HK Observatory and Joint Typhoon
Warning Center
●

Any typhoon is coming to Hong Kong ? And
When will it come ?

●

No easy data exchange format.

●

No RSS nor ATOM.

●

We aren't check websites everyday.

My Products
●

WeatherHK ← ← ←

●

TCTrack

WeatherHK
●

http://twitter.com/weatherhk

●

hourly current weather report

●

weather forecast report

●

tropical signal warning

WeatherHK
●

●

Backend: Python + Scrapy + Database +
Twitter + NNTP......
Frontend: Twitter + Newsgroup

WeatherHK
●

http://twitter.com/weatherhk

●

Interview by MetroPop in 2009.

My Products
●

WeatherHK

●

TCTrack ← ← ←

TCTrack
●

●

●

http://sammy.hk/projects/tctrack/tctrack.php
Plot TC current and forecast tracks over
Google Map.
Source:
–

JTWC

–

HKO

TCTrack
●

●

●

http://sammy.hk/projects/tctrack/tctrack.php
Probably first tctrack map in HK using
GoogleMap
Use of GMap: TCTrack -> Weather
Underground Hong Kong -> HKO

TCTrack
●

http://twitter.com/tctrack

●

Tweet JTWC updates for Northwest Pacific.

Releases information to citizens
in a better presentation.

Starting new Open
Source project
hk0weather to create
Open Weather Data.

Starting new Open Source projects
to create Open Data
●

●

Develop a open source project.
Release data in standard machine-readable
data format.

hk0weather
●

https://github.com/sammyfung/hk0weather

●

Open Source Hong Kong Weather Project.

●

convert to JSON data from HKO webpages.

●

python + scrapy

●

1st version: from current weather report,
extracting temperture and humidity from 20+
weather stations, export in json format.

hk0weather
●

https://github.com/sammyfung/hk0weather

●

$ virtualenv hk0weatherenv

●

$ source hk0weatherenv/bin/activate

●

$ pip install scrapy

●

$ git clone
https://github.com/sammyfung/hk0weather.git

●

$ cd hk0weather

●

$ scrapy crawl currwx -t json -o testresult

hk0weather
●

Python
–

●

import re

Scrapy
–

web crawling framework written in Python.

–

HtmlXPathSelector.

–

built-in JSON, CSV, XML output.

hk0weather
[{"humidity": 80, "station": "hko", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "kingspark", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "wongchukhang", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "takwuling", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "laufaushan", "temperture": 15, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "taipo", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "shatin", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "tuenmun", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "tseungkwano", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "saikung", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "cheungchau", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "cheungchau", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "tsingyi", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "shekkong", "temperture": 15, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "tsuenwanhokoon", "temperture": 15, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "tsuenwanshingmunvalley", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "hongkongpark", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "shaukeiwan", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "kowlooncity", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "happyvalley", "temperture": 18, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "wongtaisin", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "stanley", "temperture": 16, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "kwuntong", "temperture": 15, "time": 1360785720},
{"station": "shamshuipo", "temperture": 17, "time": 1360785720}]

Items.py
class Hk0WeatherItem(Item):
time = Field()
station = Field()
temperture = Field()
humidity = Field()

Currwx.py
start_urls = (
'http://www.weather.gov.hk/wxinfo/currwx/curr
entc.htm',
)

Currwx.py
def parse(self, response):
laststation = ''
temperture = int()
stations = []
hxs = HtmlXPathSelector(response)
report = hxs.select('//div[@id="ming"]')

libhk0
class hk0:
stations = [
(u' 天文台 ', 'hko'),
(u' 京士柏 ', 'kingspark'),
(u' 黃竹坑 ', 'wongchukhang'),
(u' 打鼓嶺 ', 'takwuling'),
(u' 流浮山 ', 'laufaushan'),

libhk0
class hk0:
def gettime(self, report):
…
def hk0current(self, report):
…

Thank You!
sammy.hk
http://slidesha.re/1cleS2y

Use of Open Data in Hong Kong

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