Data Is Plural

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

2021.09.08 edition

OpenSanctions, alternative fueling, India’s political parties, software licenses, and UK parliamentary ejections.

Persons of interest. OpenSanctions, an open-source project that launched its website last week, is “an international database of persons and companies of political, criminal, or economic interest.” It combines and standardizes data from 20+ sources, such as the US Treasury’s sanctions lists (DIP 2018.02.21), Interpol’s Red Notices, members of EU parliament, and the CIA’s index of world leaders. The project uses a detailed schema to represent the particulars of each entity, including aliases, known cryptocurrency wallets, aircraft registrations, sanction dates, and more. You can download the data with those detailed representations or in simpler formats. [h/t Friedrich Lindenberg]

Alternative fueling. The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ summer update to its National Transportation Atlas Database adds a dataset on “alternative fuel corridors” — stretches of highway with a sufficient frequency of fueling stations. (Electric vehicle corridors must, for instance, have charging stations at least every 50 miles.) The release covers electric, hydrogen, propane, compressed natural gas, and liquefied natural gas infrastructure, and complements a prior dataset of 56,000+ such stations. Related: The Department of Energy’s maps and datasets of alternative fueling stations and corridors. [h/t Morgan Stevens]

India’s political parties. The Trivedi Centre for Political Data has published a dataset of “all parties that have contested national and state elections in India since 1962,” with an eye toward unifying the information across name changes. For each legislative level and state, the dataset indicates each party’s first and last year contesting elections, number of seats won, number of female and Scheduled Caste/Tribe candidates fielded, and more. [h/t Vijdan Mohammad Kawoosa + Gilles Verniers]

Software licenses. The ScanCode LicenseDB provides information about 1,700+ software licenses, ranging from the common (e.g., MIT License) to the idiosyncratic (SQLite Blessing) to the obscure (Ubuntu Font License). The records, which are part of a broader license-detection toolkit, list each license’s core phrasing, general category, custodian, relevant URLs, and other details. [h/t Philippe Ombredanne]

UK parliamentary ejections. A UK House of Commons Library research briefing in July included a spreadsheet of “MPs who have left the Chamber voluntarily, been asked to withdraw, or who have been suspended,” along with the date, reason, and suspension period. Another briefing, published the same day, “attempts to capture all instances where an apology has been made on the floor of the House of Commons since 1979.” [h/t Andi Fugard]