Back in May 2009, Dave Eaves promotes his motion, by way of dimwit Andrea Reimer
http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-open-city/

and then clears up the notion some months later.
http://eaves.ca/2009/09/25/misunderstanding-and-understanding-the-open-data-hype/

Early version of the mapping idea in the UK in 2006. That’s about right, Vancouver is infamous for being at least 3 years behind in fashion which is why gurus can appear to be magic at ECCIAD or SCARP or Fashion Week.
http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/index.php

Overlong explanation of Free Open Source GIS software. Go to wiki on Grass software
” GRASS A (not so) short overview of the Geographic Information System GRASS” By Matteo Dell’Omodarme and Giada Valle
linuxgazette.net/156/dellomodarme.html

What the kids with their blocks do with “Open Data.” And note the dates, they don’t maintain it or give revision dates. Light and interesting, even the lacunae.
http://www.socialtext.net/vandata/index.cgi
More thoughts on one project as a result of Vancouver Open Data
http://www.socialtext.net/lukec/index.cgi?reflections_on_a_vantrash_article

At the root, what the semi-organized public are doing with the OpenData
http://www.socialtext.net/vandata/

Last Vancouver Hackathon, and who showed interest. Sponsored by Vancouver Museum.
http://www.socialtext.net/vandata/index.cgi?open_data_hackathon_december_2009

Not very good attempt at showing Open data possiblities, beyond maps into genetics, politics, social measures See especially http://www.isitopendata.org/about/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/where_to_find_open_data_on_the.php

Other issues in Canada and abroad
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/738305–geist-canada-dragging-its-feet-on-open-data-initiatives

Seriously, why is this so hard to come by?

Should be:

http://vancouver.ca/sustainability/documents/2008GHGInventoryMethodologiesDocument20091210.pdf

Also note http://vancouver.ca/sustainability/documents/ghgperpersonglobal2008.pdf

Some weeks ago, I emailed Vancouver’s Climate Change Program Manager, Sean Pander asking if the claimed North America’s lowest figure of 4.6 metric tons of green house gases (GHG’s) per capita included GHG’a produced in the Port of Vancouver, by the cement plant on Granville Island, by planes at the airport. The question has not been answered. Nor has a follow up question asking for an explanation of the very different ratios of building to transport GHG’s in Seattle and Vancouver per websites. (Road transport GHG is almost twice building GHG in Seattle — in Vancouver road transport is roughly a third less than building GHG.)

[ Web sites: http://seattle.gov/climate/docs/2008-community-summary.pdf and 2008GHGInventoryMethodologiesDocument20091210.pdf -- an email to Vancouver Councilor David Cadman referencing my unanswered emails to Mr Pender and asking for an answer also has gone unanswered.]

Can you explain why child hackers are any less worthy of using data? Can only cool stuff be done by Grumpy Old Folks?

I approve.

In any event much kudos to the City of Vancouver and Open Data. … (Don’t Fence My Data)

Those two don’t have specific GIS format files in the table, but that is the beauty of GIS. You get points, vectors (lines), polygonal areas, and you attach values from the internal GIS file and from external tables such as street address and assessments.

The two items you mentioned don’t have DWG, KHL, SHP files in the table.
Most software for those files are expensive. And ESRI’s ARCview and ArcGIS are the Microsoft’s of mapping software.
Others will use GRASS or other FOSS software to add them in.

(One of the few advantages of the Olympics was that we got a second round of street scanning/mapping from Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Map and StreetView, much like Starbucks first entry in to a foreign country with its trials shops in Vancouver.)

The City was nice enough that if you click on the table headers at http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/index.htm you get http://data.vancouver.ca/dataFormats.htm which explains what the new alphabet soup is. And in that they linked to Wikipedia articles in each for newcomers.

There are two pieces of non-GIS data in there: election results and property tax assessments.