About this demo
A proof of concept by Datopian showing what Longford County Council’s open data could look like with a faster, friendlier front door.
What this is
The Council publishes 69 items on its ArcGIS Hub. They are 20datasets: most layers are listed several times, once as a feature layer and again as CSV, KML and Shapefile uploads. They cover planning applications, the County Development Plan’s zoning, heritage, landscape and wind energy maps, trails, blueways, parking and the derelict sites register. This demo takes that same public data and puts it in a site built for finding and using it. It is not an official Council website and the Council has not reviewed it.
What it adds
One search across everything
Search names, descriptions and keywords across all 20 datasets, filter by topic or type, and go straight to the data.
Tables and maps that load instantly
Tables open in a sortable, filterable preview. Map layers are pre-cut into vector tiles, so maps draw only what is in view.
Queries in the browser
Filter, chart or write SQL against any dataset. It runs in your browser on open file formats, with no database to run.
How it works
Every dataset was read from the Council’s public ArcGIS services and converted into open formats: CSV and Parquet for tables, PMTiles and GeoParquet for map layers, plus GeoJSON for download. Record counts match the source, apart from a few map rows with no location. A scheduled job can re-read ArcGIS to keep the site current; ArcGIS stays where the Council manages its data, and each dataset page links back to its live ArcGIS service.
Questions or feedback?
This demo was built by Datopian, a core contributor to CKAN and the team behind PortalJS. Write to us at hello@datopian.com. For questions about the data itself, contact Longford County Council’s Planning Department at planning@longfordcoco.ie.