The Finnish Meteorological Institute has opened an online service which makes openly available data sets such as weather, sea and climate observation data, time series and model data in a machine-readable format.
Users can download these materials freely from the online service. At the initial stages, the service will provide real-time observations from various meteorological stations and road condition observations made by the Finnish Transport Agency and the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for Southeast Finland.
In terms of forecast models, the service will feature the latest weather model forecast and the latest sea level and wave height forecasts, for example. New data sets will be made available gradually as they become technically ready for publication.
The weather products and warnings targeted at the general public are available on the Finnish Meteorological Institute website.
The open data will initially benefit application developers, in particular, as they will be able to use the data sets opened by the Finnish Meteorological Institute to develop new services, applications and products.
The amount of data made public by the Finnish Meteorological Institute is substantial. The institute is also among the pioneers on the European level in terms of making data sets openly available.
Making public data sets openly available for outsiders' reuse is one of the key projects in the Government Programme. The project is based on the Government resolution of March 2011 according to which data sets produced with public funding will be opened for the use of citizens and companies. In practice, the publication of the data sets means that the digital data sets administered by the public sector will be converted into a machine-readable format to enable their easy reuse.
