Recently, some friends in the MalGIS group asked about building WebGIS applications to display real-time flight tracks, ship trajectories, weather, earthquakes, and other data, but struggled to find data sources. After some searching, I found that such real-time data sources are quite scattered. Fortunately, I came across a public dataset list on GitHub that covers a wide variety of data types, many of which are useful for GIS development. Interested folks may find it helpful.

Repository Overview

The maintainer organizes the sources into free and paid categories, further subdivided into finance, transportation, information, IoT, cybersecurity, development testing, and more. Each entry includes an official documentation or API endpoint.

Repository URL: https://github.com/bytewax/awesome-public-real-time-datasets

With these data sources, you no longer need to hunt for APIs when building GIS application demos.

GIS-Related Categories

After a quick browse, the categories most relevant to our daily work are mainly the following.

Transportation and Location Dynamics

  • OpenSky Network – provides global real-time ADS-B position data for flights
  • Norwegian Coastal Administration – provides real-time AIS vessel position data
  • GBFS – provides real-time docked bike-sharing location data
  • MTA GTFS Realtime – provides real-time arrival data for New York subway and buses
  • Transport for London – provides real-time operational data for London buses and underground
  • Transport for NSW – provides real-time public transport data for New South Wales, Australia
  • Germany’s Mobilithek – provides real-time road network congestion data
  • Switzerland’s Open Transport Data – provides real-time traffic and public transport data

Weather, Environment, and Hazards

  • OpenWeather – provides real-time weather data
  • NOAA – provides real-time buoy and meteorological data
  • EPA AirNow – provides real-time air quality data
  • USGS – provides real-time earthquake event data
  • Seismic Portal – provides real-time earthquake data via WebSocket push
  • UK Environment Agency – provides real-time flood monitoring data
  • Grid Status – provides real-time status data for the U.S. power grid
  • GDELT 2.0 – provides real-time global event streams

IoT and Sensor Networks

  • Sensor.Community – provides real-time air quality sensor data worldwide
  • ThingSpeak – provides real-time IoT sensor data for temperature, humidity, noise, etc.

Development and Testing

  • Lenses Datagen – provides synthetic stream data such as AIS and taxi trip records
  • SSE.dev – provides SSE test streams with configurable intervals

In addition, there are real-time International Space Station data, N2YO satellite orbit query, SpaceX launch API, and more.

Usage Notes

Free APIs generally have rate limits, and some require registration for an API key. Open APIs like OpenSky do not guarantee SLA under high-concurrency scenarios. For stable, low-latency needs, consider the paid sources listed. Also, real-time data does not equal unlimited history. Many streams only retain the latest state; for playback or long-sequence analysis, you will need to store the data yourself.

Summary

This repository compiles scattered real-time data sources, including HTTP streams, WebSockets, and SSE, which are useful for GIS developers to practice and prototype. The list is continuously updated; if you encounter broken links, feel free to submit an issue or PR on the repository.

Finally, please comply with each platform’s terms of service when using the data, and for commercial use, be sure to check the licensing scope. If you have better real-time geospatial data sources, feel free to share them in the comments.