Blog post by Emma Teuten, RSPB Conservation Data Management

We've recently unlocked a range of our data on our brand new Open Data portal. But what does it mean, and how can you access it?

More and more organisations are sharing data for free, with no restrictions on how it can be used. This can lead to the data being used in all kinds of new and interesting ways. 

Our Open Data site makes geographic data, such as our reserve boundaries, freely available to everyone.

RSPB Open data portal

You can easily investigate the data using the site’s interactive map. Or you can download the data as a spreadsheet, or as a GIS file, which can be used in mapping applications.

Many of the layers have extra information, in addition to what you see on the map. For example, the reserve boundaries indicate which reserves have public access, which might help you plan your next adventure!

The site also provides several options for accessing the data as a web service.

RSPB Open data portal

These can be easily incorporated into apps, and other organisation’s websites. The website is easy for us to edit, so we’ll be able to update the data regularly, for example when the reserve boundaries change.

If someone has linked to our data using a web service, the data they’re using will update automatically when we change it - so they always show the latest version of the data.

So far, we’ve made over 30 datasets available. Many of these are hotspots from our seabird tracking work. These show which areas of sea are most important for the birds. In addition to revealing where birds are more likely to be seen, this is useful for planning which areas of sea should be protected, and which sites might be suitable for offshore developments.

RSPB Open data portal

Other interesting datasets you can find on the site include locations of wild bird crime events, Important Bird Areas in the UK, and coastal habitat creation opportunities identified by our Sustainable Shores project.

Over time, we’ll be making more datasets openly available. We’re hoping that making all this information available to the world will inspire more creative uses of our spatial data!