3rd collection of Open Repair Data released

We are happy to announce the release of our 3rd set of Open Repair Data. The latest dataset has nearly 50,000 recorded repair attempts logged at community repair events around the world.

This latest update contains data from events that were held to the end of September 2020 and adds historic data from existing Open Repair Alliance (ORA) partners along with data from a new source – Repair Cafe Wales. It is also the first dataset that we have produced in the new Open Repair Data Standard v0.2 format. 

Adding historic data

Given the problems involved with in-person events during the pandemic, there have been few community repairs since March 2020 and less data being logged. However, groups within the ORA partner networks have used this time to sift through old spreadsheets and paper forms from their past events and get the information into their databases. These efforts have taken the number of repair attempts in the open repair data to 48,669.

Data from a new place

We are delighted to welcome Repair Cafe Wales as a new data provider with their wonderful  contribution of around 2500 records! Repair Cafe Wales starts and supports repair cafes in Wales, UK.

We are thrilled to be extending our reach beyond the original ORA partners and are keen to find even more contributors. So please contact us if you have been collecting community repair data and you’re happy to share it publicly.

A new format

This is the first aggregation to use the ORDS v0.2 format.  As such, the dataset now includes both our categorisation of products according to the ORDS standard and the partners’ own categorisation. Additionally, since the last export there has been some amendment of repair status mapping for Repair Cafes, improving the consistency of the data.

You will also find a new column that stores information about the barriers that prevented a successful repair. It’s not yet fully populated but we are working to improve that going forward.

You can find out more about the ORDS v0.2 format here.

What’s next?

There’s a lot more in the pipeline for repair data from the Open Repair Alliance.

We will start the next aggregation in April for data from events that ran until the end of March 2021 and we hope to take a dive into how data quality can be enhanced and enriched.

We will also be exploring citizen science approaches to analysing the data – for example classifying the fault types for some key categories of products.

Stay tuned for more updates, and get in touch if you would like to get involved.

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