Data Is Plural

Refugee and asylum policies. The Dataset of World Refugee and Asylum Policies “offers a complete dataset of de jure asylum and refugee policies” across 190+ countries and 70+ years, from 1951 to 2022. The project, developed by Christopher W. Blair et al. and updated in collaboration with the Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, evaluates 54 aspects of each policy across five dimensions: access, services, the ability to earn a livelihood, freedom of movement, and political inclusion. Each aspect is scored on a 0-1-2-3 scale. The results are available to download and to analyze online. [h/t Annika Younge]

Tens of millions of flights. Sebastiaan Menger has developed a series of quarterly datasets “featuring global, high-level flight schedules extracted from worldwide aircraft ADS-B position transmissions,” going back to early 2024. Each quarterly extract, derived from the ADSB.lol flight-tracking initiative’s open data, features 10–13 million flights. Each flight’s entry indicates the aircraft’s registration number, type, call sign, airline (when applicable), approximate liftoff/touchdown times, and origin/destination airports.

US sewer overflow sites. “There are approximately 700 communities in the United States that have combined sewer systems and experience combined sewer overflow (CSO) discharges,” according to the EPA, whose National Combined Sewer Overflow Inventory lists 8,600+ outfalls across those communities. The downloadable inventory, last updated in September 2023, provides each outfall’s location and relevant information from the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System’s permit database. As seen in: “Minority communities twice as likely to have sewage polluting nearby river or creek, CBS News analysis shows”. Previously: Sewer overflows in England (DIP 2024.05.15).

Previously unmapped waterways. WaterNet Global Waterways is “a new global dataset that predicts the locations of waterways around the world” using an AI model trained on satellite imagery and elevation data. A collaboration between Bridges to Prosperity and the Better Planet Laboratory, the dataset — available as raster files, vector files, and an interactive map — “triples the known extent of mapped waterways globally, adding 124 million kilometers to the previously mapped 54 million kilometers.” [h/t Cameron Kruse]

Canoe marathons. Paddle UK’s Marathon Racing Committee promotes endurance canoe and kayak competitions that range “from a couple of miles or kilometres to the ultimate challenge of the 125-mile Devizes to Westminster Canoe Race.” The organization publishes race results online, which data scientist Andrew Collier has collected into structured data files that indicate each competition’s date, name, region, and category, as well as each paddler’s name, club, division, class, finishing time, position, and points.