open-signals

open-signals

Public data, ready for maps and agents. Every reading says where it came from, when it was fetched, and what licence it carries.

open-signals has three parts:

• A catalogue of public data sources (catalog/sources.json). Each entry gives the API, coverage, cadence, the key it needs and its licence. Weather, water, ice, hazards, flights, ships, satellites, energy, emissions, filings, trade and more. It's the list to check before writing yet another fetcher.

• Fetchers for the sources we read today. Each one turns an upstream answer into one shape, the reading:

  { "id": "noaa-coops:9063085:2026-10-10", "at": "2026-10-10", "metric": "water_level",
    "value": 2.762, "unit": "ft above LWD",
    "summary": "Lake Erie at Toledo 2026-10-10: mean 2.76 ft above low water datum (…)",
    "place": { "id": "coops-toledo", "name": "Lake Erie at Toledo", "lat": 41.6936, "lng": -83.4723 },
    "fields": { "station": "9063085", "datum": "LWD", "readings": 155 },
    "source": { "id": "noaa-coops", "name": "NOAA CO-OPS water levels", "url": "https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/…",
                "fetched_at": "2026-10-10T19:12:03Z", "license": "public_domain" } }
  

• Ways in: a CLI, a REST API with an OpenAPI description, an MCP server for agents, and GeoJSON map layers. There are no runtime dependencies; it needs Node 20 or later.

Use it

A public instance runs at https://open-signals.civops.io (REST under /v1, MCP at /mcp). It serves only public-domain and open sources, holds no upstream keys, and is rate-limited per IP. Try https://open-signals.civops.io/v1/layers/volcanoes?elevated=true.

git clone https://github.com/Civops-Platform/open-signals && cd open-signals   # Node 20+, no npm install needed
alias open-signals='node bin/open-signals.mjs'
open-signals sources fires                     # search the catalogue
open-signals sources --topic water --fetchable
open-signals fetch usgs-earthquakes --min 4.5 --window week
open-signals fetch noaa-coops --coops 8518750   # any CO-OPS station
open-signals fetch open-meteo --lat 41.5 --lng -81.7
open-signals layer water_level                 # GeoJSON
open-signals serve --port 3290                 # REST + MCP

fetch and layer run on your machine with your own keys (NASS_API_KEY, EBIRD_API_KEY). The CLI prints each source's licence so you know what you may do with what you fetched.

REST

GET /v1/sources?query=&topic=&license=&fetchable=	search the catalogue
GET /v1/sources/{id}	one entry
GET /v1/hubs	projects that collect sources (below)
GET /v1/places?tag=	named places as GeoJSON
GET /v1/readings?source={id}&place=&tag=&lat=&lng=&coops=&usgs=&ebird=&state=&bbox=&metric=&since=&limit=	readings
GET /v1/layers · GET /v1/layers/{id}?date=	map layers as GeoJSON
GET /openapi.json	the full description

CESMII i3X

The same layers are served as a read-only CESMII i3X 1.0 endpoint at https://open-signals.civops.io/i3x/v1. The address space has a root, one folder per layer, and one object per place or event. Each object's value is its latest reading (value, quality, timestamp) with source and licence, and its history is every reading held for that place. Subscriptions support sync and server-sent-event streams.

CESMII's conformance suite (build 6, run 10 October 2026) rates it i3X 1.0 Compatible: 50 passed, 0 failed, 10 skipped (report). The skipped tests are the write tests; full compliance needs writes, and a server that republishes public data has nothing to write.

The spec requires authentication on data endpoints, so there is a free public read-only token: os-public-read (send Authorization: Bearer os-public-read). GET /i3x/v1/info needs none.

Static datasets

Data that changes slowly is served as GeoJSON files rather than fetched live: wildfire burn perimeters for the last 20 years (NIFC WFIGS and USFS MTBS, one file per state), public-land share by county (USGS PAD-US 4.1), federal campgrounds (RIDB) and fire-weather stations (RAWS), all public domain. GET /v1/datasets lists them with source, licence and parts; GET /v1/datasets/{id}/{part} returns one part (a two-letter state, or all). A deployment points OPEN_SIGNALS_DATA_DIR at a folder holding the files and an index.json; the format is described in src/datasets.js.

MCP

POST /mcp uses the streamable HTTP transport (JSON-RPC 2.0). It is stateless and needs no auth. Every tool is read-only:

• search_sources, get_source, list_hubs, list_places
• get_readings, list_layers, get_layer
• list_datasets, get_dataset_part

To add it to a client:

{ "mcpServers": { "open-signals": { "type": "http", "url": "https://open-signals.civops.io/mcp" } } }

Licences: what a server will republish

The code is Apache-2.0. The data is not ours to relicense. Every source keeps its own terms, and the licence travels on every reading. A running server republishes data, so it applies a gate:

licence	examples	served
public_domain	NOAA, USGS, USDA, NASA FIRMS, SEC	always
open	CC BY, ODbL (OpenStreetMap, adsb.lol, ECMWF, GDELT)	always; attribution travels with it
non_commercial	Open-Meteo free tier, eBird, OpenSky	only with OPEN_SIGNALS_NONCOMMERCIAL=1 (you run a non-commercial deployment)
restricted	Google 3D Tiles, TomTom	never
unknown	anything not yet reviewed	never

A refused source answers 451 with the licence and the reason. Fetching for yourself with the CLI is not republishing, so the gate doesn't apply there.

Fetchers today

source	what	key
usgs-earthquakes	worldwide earthquakes, by window and magnitude floor	—
usgs-volcanoes	alert level and aviation colour code for every monitored US volcano	—
noaa-nwps	river stage and flood category (observed and forecast) at every NOAA gauge in a box	—
epa-echo	major EPA-regulated facilities in a state, with compliance status and penalties	—
openfda-recalls	FDA food, drug and device recalls of the last 60 days, at the firm's ZIP	—
usaspending	the 100 largest new federal contract awards of the last 30 days, at the place-of-performance ZIP	—
gbif	open-licensed (CC0, CC-BY) wildlife and plant observations of the last two weeks, worldwide, by group and box	—
nasa-eonet	open natural events worldwide (storms, wildfires, volcanoes, floods, ice), latest position	—
world-bank	World Bank indicators by country at the capital: GDP growth, inflation, manufacturing, exports, FDI, unemployment	—
emsc	EMSC-CSEM earthquakes worldwide, densest over Europe (CC BY 4.0), by window and magnitude floor	—
noaa-ibtracs	the latest best-track fix of every active tropical cyclone, any basin	—
eurostat	industrial production by country (index or year-on-year), latest month, at the capital	—
gem-trackers	Global Energy Monitor Global Integrated Power Tracker (CC BY 4.0, 2026-08 release): plants of 50 MW and up, operating or under construction, by country, fuel and status (replaces the WRI database, static since 2021)	—
openfema	FEMA disaster declarations of the last 90 days, at the county (or state) point	—
usda-ams-barge	weekly downbound grain tonnage at seven Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio and Arkansas River locks (USDA AMS, from USACE LPMS)	—
bts-border-crossings	inbound trucks, trains and vehicles per US-Canada and US-Mexico port of entry, latest month	—
epa-tri	Toxics Release Inventory: on-site releases per facility in a state, latest reporting year	—
epa-campd	power-plant CO2, SO2 and NOx per facility in a state, latest month in EPA's keyless bulk files	—
noaa-coops	water levels at any CO-OPS station (LWD on the Great Lakes, MLLW on tidal stations)	—
usgs-water	river discharge and gage height at any USGS gauge	—
glerl	Great Lakes ice cover (December to May)	—
usda-nass	weekly crop progress and condition, national and by state	NASS_API_KEY (free)
open-meteo	daily weather, 92 days back and 7 forward, anywhere	— (non-commercial)
waterfowl-wsi	the duck Weather Severity Index (Schummer et al. 2010) from Open-Meteo	— (non-commercial)
ebird	waterfowl reported in an eBird region in the last 7 days	EBIRD_API_KEY (free, non-commercial)
open-meteo-flood	GloFAS river discharge today at about a hundred large-river locations worldwide, with the week's change and the 30-day ensemble high	— (non-commercial)
open-meteo-air	CAMS modelled air quality now at 150 large cities: US AQI, European AQI, PM2.5, PM10	— (non-commercial)
adsb-lol	live aircraft from the adsb.lol receiver network (ODbL): around any point (mode=area), every military-flagged aircraft worldwide (mode=military), or GPS interference per 1° cell inferred from aircraft position accuracy (mode=gps, the GPSJam method). Aircraft in the FAA LADD and PIA privacy programmes are never served	—
nasa-firms	NASA FIRMS VIIRS heat detections from the keyless global files: fires of the last 24 hours (mode=fires), ~1 km spots hot on 3+ of the last seven days (mode=persistent, derived: industry, flares, volcanoes), and heat days with owner and parent company at every hot site in four Global Energy Monitor trackers: blast-furnace and DRI steel plants (mode=steel), cement kilns (mode=cement), chemical plants (mode=chemicals) and oil and gas fields (mode=oil_gas, flaring), all derived	—
nws-alerts	active National Weather Service watches, warnings and advisories, one point per alert per county; by state, kind or event	—
usbr-rise	Bureau of Reclamation daily storage at about 215 western reservoirs (RISE), with the week's change; by Reclamation region	—
digitraffic-ais	live ship positions in Finnish waters and the northern Baltic (Fintraffic, CC BY 4.0), with name, type and destination; pleasure craft never served	—
corroboration	derived: the same event seen by two independent sources or one. Earthquakes in USGS and EMSC (a relayed USGS-network solution counts once), and US wildfire incidents against FIRMS satellite heat	—
smithsonian-gvp	Smithsonian Volcanoes of the World: volcanoes erupting since 1900 worldwide, and those erupting now	— (non-commercial)

Observed, modelled or derived

A sensor reading and a conclusion drawn from it are not the same thing, so a reading says which it is. No basis means something observed it (a gauge, a seismometer, a receiver). basis: "modelled" is a model's output (Open-Meteo weather, GloFAS discharge, CAMS air quality). basis: "derived" is inferred from other readings and carries derived_from saying from what (GPS interference from aircraft NACp, the duck Weather Severity Index from modelled weather, persistent heat and steel-plant heat from FIRMS detections, and corroboration, which pairs two sources on one event and says when an apparent second source is only relaying the first). Layer features always carry basis.

The rest of the catalogue is listed but not fetched yet. Adding a fetcher is the most useful contribution; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Hubs

catalog/hubs.json lists the projects we watch so we don't search from scratch each time:

• God's Eye View (Bilawal Sidhu and Sameh Khamis)
• World Monitor
• OSIRIS and WorldWideView
• Shadowbroker, ULTOR and Gemini / Claude Earth (community builds on the God's Eye View recipe)
• the official MCP Registry and awesome-mcp-servers
• Source Cooperative, the AWS Open Data registry, Data.gov and public-apis

When a source is found through one of them, its entry records that in found_via.

Run it

npm test                  # offline, upstreams stubbed
npm run test:live         # every fetcher against its real upstream, then REST and MCP
PORT=3290 npm start

variable	meaning
PORT	default 3290
OPEN_SIGNALS_NONCOMMERCIAL=1	this deployment is non-commercial and may republish non-commercial sources
RATE_LIMIT_PER_MIN	per client IP, default 60
TRUST_PROXY=1	read the client IP from X-Forwarded-For behind a proxy

Responses are cached in memory per source, place and parameters (2 minutes for earthquakes, up to 6 hours for weekly sources), so upstreams see polite traffic.

No warranty

open-signals passes on what public agencies and projects publish, as they publish it. Readings can be late, preliminary, revised or wrong upstream. It is provided as is (see LICENSE), and it is not for navigation, safety or any decision that cannot tolerate a bad reading.