x1489/ballard-observatory

Ballard Observatory: the Ballard (Seattle) data lake

Every public record and measurement about the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle that the Ballard Observatory platform collects, in one open, queryable lake. It is refreshed automatically.

Layout

manifest.json                      lineage: source URL, record key, capture mode, rows, last refresh, removed fields
<dataset>/batches/<id>.parquet     change-only archive: a record is written again only when its content changes
<dataset>/current.parquet          the latest version of every record (+ _first_seen, _last_seen, _active)
_out/                              analytics outputs (insights, hotspots, series, places, catalog, dossiers)

Raw values are stored as strings exactly as published (objects as JSON), so upstream schema changes never lose data. Typed SQL views, including a unified events view, are defined in platform/bo/views.py.

-- DuckDB, straight from the Hub
SELECT initial_call_type, count(*)
FROM 'hf://datasets/x1489/ballard-observatory/spd_calls/current.parquet'
GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC LIMIT 20;

Datasets and their terms

Dataset	Publisher	Terms
spd_calls, spd_crime, sfd_911, building_permits, land_use_permits, code_complaints, csr, encampment_reports, illegal_dumping, business_licenses, short_term_rentals, bridge_openings, parking_hourly, fremont_bridge_bikes	City of Seattle Open Data (data.seattle.gov)	City of Seattle open data terms of use
food_inspections	King County (data.kingcounty.gov)	King County open data terms
liquor_applications, liquor_licensees	Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (data.wa.gov)	Washington open data terms
wastewater_covid, wastewater_flu, wastewater_levels	US CDC National Wastewater Surveillance System (data.cdc.gov)	US government work
tides_hourly	NOAA CO-OPS	US government work
weather_hourly	Open-Meteo historical archive (ERA5-based)	CC BY 4.0: "Weather data by Open-Meteo.com"
pageviews_daily	Wikimedia Foundation pageviews API	CC0
council_matters, council_events	Seattle City Council (Legistar)	public records

Privacy

Only public records are collected. Personal fields are removed at ingest:

• liquor-license applicants' names, birthdates and phone numbers
• sole proprietors' legal names and business phone numbers

Locations that publishers redact (for example SPD's redacted locations) stay redacted. Personal fields removed for each dataset are listed in manifest.json (dropped_fields).

Coverage

This covers Greater Ballard: 47.655–47.700 °N and 122.355–122.415 °W, ZIP codes 98107 and 98117, and SPD neighborhoods Ballard North and Ballard South. History goes back to 2003 for fire and medical 911, 2008 for crime, 2009 for police calls, and 2013–2018 onward for 311 datasets.