2024.04.24 edition
Public procurement. The Global Public Procurement Dataset provides standardized data on 72 million government contracts in 42 countries. The dataset, constructed from official sources by the Budapest-based Government Transparency Institute, represents $17 trillion in total procurement. It begins in the 2000s for most of the countries and concludes in 2021. For each contract, it provides information about the tender (title, procedure type, product code, publication date, award date, final price, currency, etc.), government buyer, bidders’ names and locations, and more. The downloadable files are split into two repositories. The US, Italy, Brazil, Poland, and Colombia have the most contracts represented. Previously: The Open Contracting Partnership’s data registry (DIP 2023.03.08) and data standard (DIP 2020.02.26).
Chain locations and more. All The Places is “a growing set of web scrapers designed to output consistent geodata about as many places of business in the world as possible.” During its latest weekly run, the project’s 2,400+ open-source scrapers collected data on nearly 5 million locations. They include postal collection boxes, ATMs, various fast food chains and chain stores, gas stations, and more. The results are available on an interactive map, to download in bulk, and by location type. Related: Journalist Matt Stiles maintains a collection of US-focused scrapers gathering the locations of dozens of chain stores and restaurants, with Python notebooks for each scraper. [h/t Forest Gregg + Sharon Machlis]
Wholesale electricity markets. The US Energy Information Administration recently launched a Wholesale Electricity Market Portal, providing visualizations and downloads of market data from regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) — the country’s electric-grid coordinating entities. The data include “day-ahead” electricity prices, real-time prices, actual/forecasted load and demand, fuel mix by time, and local temperatures. Learn more: A 30-minute introductory video from the EIA.
Food-system indicators. The Food Systems Countdown Initiative produces “annual publications to measure, assess, and track the performance of global food systems toward 2030 and the conclusion of the Sustainable Development Goals.” As part of that work, its Food Systems Dashboard incorporates 275 metrics from dozens of sources about countries’ food availability, affordability, supply chains, safety, and related topics. Examples include protein supply per capita, number of supermarkets per capita, trans fat regulations, and food safety poll results. [h/t Jan Willem Tulp]
Three-dimensional natural history. At MorphoSource, you can “find, view, and download 3D data representing the world’s natural history, cultural heritage, and scientific collections.” The service hosts 82,000+ 3D models you can view online; roughly half can be downloaded without prior approval. As described in a recent BioScience article, the Florida Museum of Natural History’s openVertebrate project used MorphoSource to share 3D models and volumetric CT scans of 10,000+ amphibian, reptile, fish, bird, and mammal specimens. [h/t Duncan Geere]