Data Is Plural

... is a weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets.

2016.07.13 edition

UN votes, medical industry payments, hundreds of millions of street addresses, workplace inspections, and Pokémon.

Every United Nations vote, 1946–2014. This repository contains voting data from each of the UN General Assembly’s the first 69 sessions. One spreadsheet summarizes the topic and results of each voted-upon resolution. (The dataset also indicates whether the U.S. State Department identified the vote as “important” — such those condemning human rights violations in Syria and North Korea — in its annual Voting Practices in the United Nations report.) Another file contains each country’s individual voting decisions. [h/t David Robinson]

The money bone. Late last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services added data from 2015 to its Open Payments database, which tracks medical companies’ payments to doctors and teaching hospitals. The payments — which include consulting fees, gifts, honoraria, meals, drinks, grants, and more — totaled more than $7.5 billion last year. Related: ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs project, which began tracking medical industry payments in 2010, long before CMS released the OpenPayments database. [h/t Cat Ferguson + Chris Hamby]

Hundreds of millions of street addresses. OpenAddresses.io is an effort to collect the official geocoordinates of the all the world’s physical addresses. (These data come from “authoritative” sources, such as city governments. When Google Maps tells you the location of an address, it’s often just a very-educated guess, extrapolated from coarser data.) As of Monday evening, the project had processed 265,078,567 addresses, mostly in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Related:Open-source geo is really something right now.”

Workplace safety. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted 86,000 workplace inspections last year. The agency makes its inspection results — including investigations of fatal accidents and severe injuries — available in bulk and via an API.

Catch ‘em all. Pokéapi is an API “detailing everything about the Pokémon main game series,” including every character, evolution, battle skill, and more. The data is also available as a series of CSVs. Currently, however, the dataset doesn’t include details from the so-hot-right-now Pokémon Go game.