| title | description | ms.service | ms.topic | author | ms.author | ms.date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
What are open datasets? Curated public datasets |
Learn about Azure Open Datasets, curated datasets from the public domain such as weather, census, holidays, and location to enrich predictive solutions. |
open-datasets |
overview |
sdgilley |
sgilley |
05/06/2020 |
Azure Open Datasets are curated public datasets that you can use to add scenario-specific features to machine learning solutions for more accurate models. Open Datasets are in the cloud on Microsoft Azure and are integrated into Azure Machine Learning and readily available to Azure Databricks and Machine Learning Studio (classic). You can also access the datasets through APIs and use them in other products, such as Power BI and Azure Data Factory.
Datasets include public-domain data for weather, census, holidays, public safety, and location that help you train machine learning models and enrich predictive solutions. You can also share your public datasets on Azure Open Datasets.
Curated open public datasets in Azure Open Datasets are optimized for consumption in machine learning workflows.
To see all the datasets available, go to the Azure Open Datasets Catalog.
Data scientists often spend the majority of their time cleaning and preparing data for advanced analytics. Open Datasets are copied to the Azure cloud and preprocessed to save you time. At regular intervals data is pulled from the sources, such as by an FTP connection to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Next, data is parsed into a structured format, and then enriched as appropriate with features such as ZIP Code or location of the nearest weather station.
Datasets are cohosted with cloud compute in Azure making access and manipulation easier.
Following are examples of datasets available.
| Dataset | Notebooks | Description |
|---|---|---|
| NOAA Integrated Surface Data (ISD) | Azure Notebooks Azure Databricks |
Worldwide hourly weather data from NOAA with the best spatial coverage in North America, Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia. Updated daily. |
| NOAA Global Forecast System (GFS) | Azure Notebooks Azure Databricks |
15-day U.S. hourly weather forecast data from NOAA. Updated daily. |
| Dataset | Notebooks | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Public Holidays | Azure Notebooks Azure Databricks |
Worldwide public holiday data, covering 41 countries or regions from 1970 to 2099. Includes country and whether most people have paid time off. |
With an Azure account, you can access open datasets using code or through the Azure service interface. The data is colocated with Azure cloud compute resources for use in your machine learning solution.
Open Datasets are available through the Azure Machine Learning UI and SDK. Open Datasets also provides Azure Notebooks and Azure Databricks notebooks you can use to connect data to Azure Machine Learning and Azure Databricks. Datasets can also be accessed through a Python SDK.
However, you don't need an Azure account to access Open Datasets; you can access them from any Python environment with or without Spark.
If you can't find the data you want, email us to request a dataset or contribute a dataset.