Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Is this book for me?

This book is written for anyone who is interested in working with Hong Kong related data: researchers, analysts, journalists, students, data scientists, etc. If you are trying to answer the following questions, then this book is for you:

  • Where can I find open data sets or APIs in domain X?
  • What open data sets already exist out there about domain X?
  • Who are the maintainers of open datasets or APIs in domain X?

Of course, any subject with regard to domain X should relate to topics in Hong Kong.

This project may seem an ambitious attempt in terms of scope, as there is plenty that is out there. However, the belief here is that crowd-sourcing would offer a solution here, as it has done for tremendously successful projects like Wikipedia, as well as other open-source communities like those for R and Python.

Our mission is to make data about Hong Kong easier to find and access. At the time of writing, the project authors (see Hong Kong District Info) have found it challenging to identify the right data sets for open-source data science and analytics projects, and this collaborative book was thus born as a side-product as we sought to create a single source of information on where all the data sources live.

1.2 Contributing

This is a collaborative book. What this means is that anyone is welcome to submit changes to the book. For more information on how to contribute, please visit https://github.com/Hong-Kong-Districts-Info/hkdatabook.

We accept anything that falls under the below categories:

  • free-to-use data sets
  • free-to-use APIs (at least to an extent)
  • packages or libraries
  • organizations or groups promoting any of the above

1.3 Sections

This book is currently divided into the following sections:

  1. Demographics
  2. Transport
  3. Government and Politics
  4. Social Media
  5. Sites with datasets and APIs
  6. Organisations promoting open data and open source software

Note that this book is in its early stages of development, and therefore the section structure are likely to change. If you have any feedback or comments, please submit an issue on our GitHub repo.

1.4 About Hong Kong Districts Info

This book project was created by the Hong Kong Districts Info group.

Our vision of Hong Kong Districts Info is to establish a learning and collaboration community to bring together people who are interested in:

  • Learning and developing new skills, and
  • Want real, impactful projects to work on

Hong Kong Districts Info provides for such an environment where aspiring developers, artists, content creators, etc. can collaborate on Hong Kong district themed projects to establish their portfolio, promote their work, collaborate on open-source projects and make a positive impact.

As the founders of this platform, we would participate in certain projects ourselves, but would also help connect and coordinate individuals so they can collaborate and publish work under our platform.

If you are someone who is looking to build and expand their first coding, design, data science project, or website/app portfolio, and if you are looking to practice your skills on a meaningful, open-source project, you have come to the right place. From our base, we hope to provide mentoring to those who do not have the skills, but want to learn them.