Shortcut: WD:METEOWikidata:WikiProject Weather observations/en
This project aims to integrate weather observations from official governmental agencies into the Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons databases and to use and perform calculations based on these data, in order to increase the content of articles from Wikipedia.
Based on this, the weather observations of the whole world could be accessible into a unique and common web environment, under a public domain licence and using free and open standards. This would allow users from every domain and from all countries to access, manipulate, download, process and display data using the Wikimedia tools.
This achievement would be a first in the world and would help, amongst other things, developing countries to better adapt and mitigate the climate change effects in vital domains such as agriculture and infrastructure building. This supports the Wikimedia foundation's mission to have free knowledge for all.
A redundancy between Wikidata and Commons could also be considered, since these two engines have features that are different and could serve different purposes.
Canada (Environment Canada)
[edit]Metadata of observation stations
[edit]In January 2019, the metadata of the 8,754 Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) weather stations were imported into Wikidata. The import was done using the software MSC Weather stations to Wikidata. A list of different requests from the stations has been created.
Here is the map of the Canadian territory with one point for each of the MSC weather stations that already existed (interactive map):
To view a typical input, see the metadata of the Trois Pistoles station Trois Pistoles (Q61022181).
It is possible to combine station metadata with each other and with all other data contained in Wikidata through SPARQL queries. For example, the:
- stations within 10 km of a port in Canada
- Ontario stations within 10 km of a city with over 100,000 inhabitants
- Quebec stations within 1 km of a bridge longer than 100 m
- stations from Canada closed in 2017 and 2018
- List of other requests
Comparison of Wikidata and MSC tool search capabilities
[edit]The Wikidata search tool offers capabilities different from the one from the SMC. Here is a table that summarizes these differences.
| Search engine | MSC | Wikidata SPARQL |
|---|---|---|
| Station name | Yes | Yes |
| Province | Yes | Yes |
| Radius around a location | Yes/No[Note 1] | Yes |
| Periods of observation data | Yes | Yes |
| Date of closure / commissioning | No | Yes |
| Altitude | No | Yes |
| Observation type (hourly, daily, monthly) | Yes | Yes |
| Metadata export (JSON, CSV, TSV, HTML, SVG) | No | Yes |
| Display, and selection, of metadata on a map | No | Yes |
| Combination of all possible criteria | No | Yes |
| Direct access to observation data | Yes | Yes/No[Note 2] |
| Continuous update of metadata | Yes | No[Note 3] |
| Export of search engine result in programming language (R, Python, etc.) | No | Yes |
| Integration of search results into an HTML file | No | Yes |
- ↑ The MSC search engine allows searches around a list of cities, provincial parks and arbitrary latitude/longitude. The Wikidata tool allows a search around any entity present in its database having geographical location (city, bridge, port, airport, etc.), to which it is possible to add conditions (population, length of bridge, etc.)
- ↑ For each station, a link in the owned by (P127) section leads to a search on the name of the station, allowing data to be downloaded from the MSC search engine.
- ↑ A manual update must be performed using the software MSC Weather Stations to Wikidata.
SMC <-> Wikidata correspondance
[edit]Data from MSC stations have been integrated into Wikidata according to the mapping rules in this table.
| Property | Description | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lfr | "NOM EN FRANÇAIS" | "Name" | For the French name, the French file of MSC is used. |
| Len | "ENGLISH NAME" | "Name" | For the English name, the English file of MSC is used. |
| Dfr | "DESCRIPTION IN FRENCH" | Weather Station of the MSC for NOM_FR (SMC_ID), PROVINCE_FR, Canada | If the name ends with an isolated "A" at the end of the name, it must be removed. Only the first letter of each word is kept in uppercase, except for a few exceptions (see the lists at the end of the msc_constant.py file). |
| Den | "DESCRIPTION IN ENGLISH" | Meteorogical Service of Canada's station for NAME_EN (MSC_ID), PROVINCE_EN, Canada | If the name ends with an isolated "A" at the end of the name, it must be removed. Only the first letter of each word is kept in uppercase, except for a few exceptions (see the lists at the end of the msc_constant.py file). |
| P31 | instance of (P31) | weather station (Q190107) / automatic weather station (Q846837) | If the file name ends with ["A", "(AUT)" "AUTO"], it is an automated station. |
| P625 | coordinate location (P625) |
|
The accuracy is up to the minute angle. |
| P2044 | elevation above sea level (P2044) | "Elevation (m)" | |
| P17 | country (P17) | Canada (Q16) | |
| P131 | located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) | "Province" | Default value. Afterwards, a manual update could specify the administrative location of the station. As an example Saguenay (Q139229) for Bagotville A (Q42393053) or Unorganized Kenora District (Q7897246) for Attawapiskat (Q61038183) |
| P4136 | WIGOS station ID (P4136) | "int.wmo.wigos-0-20000-0-" + "WMO ID" | Some stations share the same WIGOS value in the MSC file, triggering an aler in Wikdata because the ID is supposed to be unique. See "Unique value" violations for a complete list. |
| P6242 | Meteorological Service of Canada climate site ID (P6242) | "Climate ID" | According to the MSC Glossary of Climate data: « the climate ID is a 7 digit number assigned by the Meteorological Service of Canada to a site where official weather observations are taken, and serves as a permanent, unique identifier.
The first digit assigned identifies the province where the second and third digits identify the climatological district within the province. When observations are discontinued at a site, the number is not used for subsequent stations (which may, or may not, differ in name) unless it is judged that the records from the earlier and subsequent stations may be combined for most climatological purposes. » Two reference URL (P854) are added for reference to the English and French CSV file as well as retrieved (P813) for the date the information was retrieved on MSC site. |
| P127 | owned by (P127) | Meteorological Service of Canada (Q349450) | Constant property. The two URLs referencing this property lead to the MSC search tool with the name of the station as a keyword in both English and French. This links Wikidata to the MSC website where the observation data is. |
| P729 | service entry (P729) | "First Year" | |
| P3999 | date of official closure (P3999) | "Last Year" | |
| P4150 | weather history (P4150) (File on Commons) | "Data:Environnement Canada/Weather/" + "Name" + "_(Climate ID)_/" + "[Monthly|Daily|Hourly|Climate]" + "/ + "Name" + "_(Climate ID)_" "[Monthly|Daily|Hourly|Climate]" + ".tab" |
|
| P6339 | reports periodicity (P6339) | For every element, specify start time (Q24575110) and end time (Q24575125) based on the values of "HLY First Year","HLY Last Year","DLY First Year","DLY Last Year","MLY First Year","MLY Last Year".
If the maximum value is equal to the current year, do not write anything because the station is still in service. |