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Open Water Foundation guide to State of Colorado Socrata open data portal
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-owf-howto-socrata-co.md

Guide to State of Colorado Socrata Open Data Portal

by Steve Malers, Open Water Foundation, last updated 2016-02-12

Index of Open Water Foundation gists

Summary

This gist provides information about using the State of Colorado's Socrata open data portal, in particular focusing on water data.

Socrata Background

Socrata is a web-hosted platform for open data. Datasets are organized into categories and are accessible via a web browser. It is also possible to access data programatically using web services, for example to enter a URL string in a web browser or from other software to receive a specific data product. Below are some documentation resources:

To access a resource via a URL, first use the normal Socrata web interface to select a dataset. Then click on the Export button and under that SODA API. The API Endpoint will provide the basic URL to download a dataset.

The examples below will help explain how to interface with Socrata.

Automating Data Downloads with TSTool Software

The Open Water Foundation uses the TSTool software to automate processing of time series, tables, and other data. Use the TSTool WebGet command to specify the URL (see examples below) and specify a local file. This has the advantage of providing a more useful filename than Socrata provides by default.

Automating Data Downloads using Excel

To be added...

Water Rights (Net Amounts)

The "DWR Water Right Net Amounts" dataset provides the water rights for structures. Net amount water rights are the cumulative result of water right transactions that may have occurred in water court, for example appropriation, transfer, abandonment, etc. Net amount water rights are used for modeling because they represent the priorities that are used in water allocation decisions.

The API Endpoint for net amount water rights is https://data.colorado.gov/resource/acsg-f33s.json, where the file extension indicates the format of the output. The following examples will download various net amount water right datasets:

Structures

The "Active Structures with" dataset provides the water rights for structures that have active administrative data (some structures are abandoned or don't have data and can clutter up a data query).

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