Data Access

[John.Sacrey]

Hi Folks,

I have been seeing several members requesting access to the network data without having a participating station.  I hope the following information will save the developers some time in answering emails on this subject, so they can continue developing System Blue unimpeded. 

Access to the data is granted after you have a completed and registered station that is sending data to the network. The data is not to be used for commercial purposes and/or monetary gain. To my knowledge, there aren't any exceptions to this. Any exceptions would have to come from Egon and/or Tobi.

Respectfully,

John Sacrey

[DelandeC]

Thank you for the reminder John!

[Egon]

Correct!

[cutty]

Correct!

Let's summarize -
Note also the privacy policies which reflect general worldwide laws regarding participant's information and some related data.
http://www.blitzortung.org/Webpages/index.php?page=7

The authors of the provided data are "all" participants of the network.
It is not the intention of the project to
publish raw data,
to provide access to raw data,
or to market raw data to others.
This removes a main motivation to join the project and leads to a disintegration of the network.
A commercial use of data from Blitzortung.org is prohibited.

The participants can use these data for
presenting their own derived maps
or statistical evaluations on their own web sites.
Participants can collect the data to create a separate private archive
and
provide access by other users to maps and statistical information created from their own archive.

[Mel]

Hello,

I've been following the news regarding the 'blue' detector for quite sometime and want to contribute to gain access to this raw data. However, with the further delays, I must ask if there is anyway to gain access even with the delays. I would be more than happy to purchase a sensor that could be 'donated' to a data-sparse region. My region (Sweden), is quite data-rich, so my sensor wouldn't help the overall network (outside of redundancy). If this option is not available, is there a possibility of paying for the raw data on a yearly basis?

The data I require is not for commercial use what-so-ever, and would fit within the confines of the forum post above. Furthermore, I would be willing to talk to Egon and/or Tobi in depth with what I plan to do with the data to prove such. However, I'm not willing to discuss it on a public forum.

Thank you for reading,

-Mel

[DavidEA]

Hi All

Just a random thought. Can a participant be a business? (put down the pitchforks and hear me out)

I'm keen to get a System Blue for personal use, but the company I work for could also benefit from having their own System Blue. We have a network of assets which don't take kindly to having 30kA pumped through them and I could see the merit in hooking them in to the network to correlate outages with strikes.

They wouldn't be publishing the raw data, providing access to raw data, or marketing raw data to others, but rather just using the data in-house (e.g. "There is an outage here, and there was a strike nearby - the two are possibly related"). It wouldn't be used for insurance claims or anything similar, purely maintenance of the network.

So what's the thinking on this? Can a station be a business, or does it have to be a person?

[Tobi]

We already have several companies, but with private persons as owners. This is no problem as long as you don't make money with the data, i.e. sell the raw data. Additionally our data is just for fun and nobody should rely on it, what means that it's not intended for protection of life and property. We can not decide on which specific purpose the data can be used or should not be used. The user has to decide that. We always recommend to ask commercial lightning data providers for commercial purposes. Their quality and reliability is much better and they exists because of this.

[DavidEA]

Thanks Tobi,

They are looking at the commercial provider as well but, apart from being very expensive, I believe their error ellipses on the strikes are quite large (>5 km).

Out of interest, what is the usual spatial accuracy for the Blitztortung network given 2 stations 50 km apart (yes, I know it's a 'how long is a piece of string' question, but just a ballpark figure)

Cheers

David

[psper]

Hi,

I want to develop an APP for photographers, with several features for profissional and amateur photographers.

JUST one of these features would be get your data, and help drive photographers to lighting to take lightning pictures.

If my App is not free this is against your policy ?

Thanks in advance,
Paulo

[cutty]

Thanks Tobi,

They are looking at the commercial provider as well but, apart from being very expensive, I believe their error ellipses on the strikes are quite large (>5 km).

Out of interest, what is the usual spatial accuracy for the Blitztortung network given 2 stations 50 km apart (yes, I know it's a 'how long is a piece of string' question, but just a ballpark figure)

Cheers

David

First, 2 stations 50km apart won't detect a strike.  It takes a minimum of 4 stations, and in most areas, up to 17 stations may be used, with the best signals used. The issue any system has, commercial or Blitzortung, with 'deviation' or accuracy, is tha fact that strokes can be many miles long, and it's very difficult to detect exactly an originating, or an ending point.  Many times Blitzortung, if conditions are right, will nail strikes <2 or 3km, but 5km isn't bad in most respects ... Incidentally, stations within 50km may be ignored completely in the stroke computations, because of the extreme energy, and many, many lower energy sferics in a cell.  In fact, it's preferable that, under those type of conditions, that those stations stop transmitting, ....  and there's software settings that affect that.