Finding Datasets
The initial step in selecting open datasets to use is finding which datasets are available.
Open data are available from different kinds of sources, including government agencies, municipalities, companies, other organizations, and from crowd-sourcing.
Where to start looking
A good starting point to locate datasets is in open data catalogues and portals. Note that datasets can be registered in more than one catalogue, and the catalogues also harvest data from each other. Thus, there is substantial overlap in the catalogues mentioned above.
Norwegain portals
In Norway, the following catalogues and portals are good soures:
- Norway’s official catalog for open data from public sector (Felles datakatalog)
- Geonorge - national site for map data
Norwegian municipalities
Open data from Norwegian municipalities can be found in various catalogues, such as portals provided by the municipalities themselves, the Geonorge portal and Felles datakatalog. The following table gives some examples from the ten largest municipalities in Norway.
| Municipality | Geonorge | Felles datakatalog | Other portals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oslo | Map data | Felles datakatalog | Own portal |
| Bergen | Map data | Felles datakatalog | |
| Trondheim | Map data | Felles datakatalog | Own portal, Other |
| Stavanger | Map data | Felles datakatalog | Own portal |
| Bærum | Map data | Other | |
| Kristiansand | Map data | ||
| Fredrikstad | Map data | Felles datakatalog | Smart Fredrikstad |
| Sandnes | Map data | ||
| Tromsø | Map data | Felles datakatalog | Tromsø kommune åpne kartdata |
| Drammen | Map data |
Norwegian goverment agencies, etc.
Data from Norwegian government agencies:
- The Brønnøysund Register Centre
- Directorate of Fisheries
- Norwegian Mapping Authority
- Norwegian Meteorological Institute
- Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service (Nav)
- Norwegian Geological Survey
- Norwegian Space Centre
- Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage
- Norwegian Public Roads Administration
- Statistics Norway
Other sources:
International sources
- European Data Portal
- INSPIRE Geoportal for European spatial data
- UK open government data
- US open government data
Finding data elsewhere
Unfortunately, the catalogues do not cover all available data. If you do not find a specific data set, it can still be worth to search for the data in other ways, e.g by:
- visiting the web pages and/or contacting the organization you are looking for data from
- trying Google’s beta-version of a service for finding datasets: Google Dataset Search. In this you can find data from many catalogs, and through the data also discover catalogs in which they are registered.
- trying regular Google searches