Inaugural meeting of the Environment Agency’s open-access Data Advisory Group (EADAG)

On Tuesday 18th November, I attended the inaugural meeting of the EA’s Data Advisory Group. Surprisingly, many members of the group (including myself) were interested in hydrometric data for flood hazard assessment. The EA explained that they are committed to publishing as much of their data as possible, and making it open access to the public under the Open Government Licence (OGL). So far, 101 of their 17,000 datasets have been published. The difficulty is prioritising what data should be released first, given the difficulties associated with preparing the data for release. Comments and suggestions for the EADAG can be shared via the EA’s website, twitter feed (@dataenvagency), or email (opendata@environment-agency.gov.uk).