Storm Data prices

Tim Vasquez

Tim Vasquez

EF5
Joined
Dec 4, 2003
Messages
3,411
The recent Storm Data post got me wondering... does anyone here buy the PDFs? I find myself wondering if we should share them here in Stormtrack for our members. Perhaps if we have a surplus of donations we can buy a set.

I suppose it is possible that NCDC's cost recovery may be supporting someone's job at NCDC, which I fully endorse, or could be supporting a poorly-funded Storm Data collection program. But if not, the government charging $6 for what is essentially public data and copyright-free could be just another form of federal nickling and diming. What do you all say about pirating NCDC publications?

Tim
 
I wasn't aware Storm Data had a price tag...considering it's been displayed for free for years on certain NWSFO websites. Seems like it should be public record.
 
Since I was already "studying" at the UNL east campus library, I decided to look into it. From here I had free access to all of the PDF files of individual Storm Data reports. Makes me wonder if it has anything to do with the location of the computer you attempt to access the data? Just a thought, now back to "studying."
 
I tried an anonymous .edu proxy and saw that it gave me free access. It was really tempting, but I don't think I want to go down in history as the Storm Data Thief. :D

Tim
 
I still do it the old fashioned way and get the paper version...$85 a year! Back in 1985 when I first subscribed it was around $15 a year
 
Actually, I prefer having the free online data versus the PDF's anyway. The online version is super easy to import into a spreadsheet or database. And, if you're using Open Office, you easily can export it into a PDF file if you like.

I certainly can't understand if the reasoning has to do with the PDF's being "value added" items or not.
 
Shane Adams said:
I wasn't aware Storm Data had a price tag...considering it's been displayed for free for years on certain NWSFO websites. Seems like it should be public record.
Click to expand...

i agree %100...

why should people have to pay to see the storm data?

thats what the tax-dollars are for right?
 
Yeah, all of those products are offered without charge to .edu, .gov, .mil, and .k12 domains, so e.g. my office computer at OSU has free access. It appears that NCDC isn't charging for the data itself, but instead for delivery of the data, if that makes any sense, which brings up this question: if someone accesses it from an approved domain, then is it appropriate to share with others? I would think so since it has already been delivered (the data isn't copyrighted), but it would be interesting to hear other opinions.
 
David Williams said:
Yeah, all of those products are offered without charge to .edu, .gov, .mil, and .k12 domains
Click to expand...

The above, while common in atmospheric sciences, makes little sense in that educational institutions, government institutions and the military do not pay taxes. Why should the private sector pay twice (taxes plus the fee) and, say, a university researcher pay nothing?

Remember, university researchers (paid with our tax dollars) get to hold patents and can personally benefit from the tax-funded research they do.

I believe the fairer approach is the data and its delivery should be free to everyone or everyone should have to pay. My preference is the former.

I do not want to start a public-private sector debate. I just wanted to offer a different perspective.

Mike
 
Well, I may contact someone at NCDC to get their official word on what their view is of "pirating" NCDC material and what the cost recovery is supposed to recover. It is still a mystery to me. If it's bandwidth, a 5 MB PDF is not going to cost anybody $6 in bandwidth... certainly not in 2007 and definitely not when they're already serving multiple-GB of WSR-88D data free of charge on the HDSS system.

Tim
 
Tim Vasquez said:
Well, I may contact someone at NCDC to get their official word on what their view is of "pirating" NCDC material and what the cost recovery is supposed to recover. It is still a mystery to me. If it's bandwidth, a 5 MB PDF is not going to cost anybody $6 in bandwidth... certainly not in 2007 and definitely not when they're already serving multiple-GB of WSR-88D data free of charge on the HDSS system.

Tim
Click to expand...
Are you referring to the Storm Events database? If so, I think your best bet is to simply buy the CDROM of the entire thing. I purchased a copy a while back, intending to make it available to GR2/3/AE when viewing archived data (as part of some sort of grlevelx.com subscription). Unfortunately, the cdrom becomes out of date the instant it's produced and NCDC doesn't have a way of cleanly merging old with new data. For example, each event doesn't have a unique, non-changing ID. So, when new data comes in, you have to do some sort of text comparison to see if it's already in your database ... an error-prone process.

FYI, the entire database is 580MB in .mdb format. That format includes plenty of "air" and when zipped, the .mdb file is only 80MB.

Mike
 
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