This text, part of the #ODDStories series, tells a story of Open Data Day‘s grassroots impact directly from the community’s voices.
For Open Data Day 2025, Thailand is spotlighting disasters as a key theme under the title:
“Floods, Smog, Wildfires: Decoding Thailand’s Endless Disaster with Data.”
We recognize disasters as part of a polycrisis—a web of interconnected crises that cannot be solved in isolation. In Thailand, floods, smog, and wildfires are not isolated events; they are deeply linked to socio-economic vulnerabilities, political decisions, and environmental degradation. We believe that better data and effective data use are key to tackling these challenges.
This year, WeVis (Civic Tech), in collaboration with partners ThaiPBS, theactive_net, Policy Watch – Thai PBS, and 101_pub, organized an Open Data Day onsite event on 2 March 2025 at Siam Paragon as a half-day, open-access, free-to-attend gathering, livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube. The event was not only part of the global celebration of International Open Data Day but also a reaffirmation of our commitment to transparency and civic engagement through open data. With around 100 attendees, including both registered participants and walk-ins, we welcomed a diverse audience—ranging from those familiar with Open Data to newcomers who had never heard of it before but were drawn in by the event’s format and discussions.
🔍 Activities
The event was structured into three main segments:
1. Policy Forum: Using Data to Solve Thailand’s Never-Ending Disasters
This panel discussion tackled Thailand’s ongoing disaster management challenges through a data-driven lens. We invited leading experts in disaster management to analyze floods, smog, and wildfires, exploring how data could improve policy and response strategies.
The takeaway from this session:
- Thailand has plenty of disaster-related data, but it is scattered and disorganized, making it hard to use effectively.
- Lack of standardized, accessible formats prevents data from reaching the right people at the right time.
- Experts emphasized the need for greater data transparency, cross-agency data sharing, and community-level disaster preparedness.
- One of the biggest upcoming challenges? Climate change, which is making disasters more frequent and unpredictable.
- Additionally, certain personal data protection laws may pose hurdles in responding to disasters efficiently.
2. Mini Exhibition: Sonification – Listening to Disaster Data
This year, we introduced a new interactive approach to data interpretation: sonification—the process of converting data into sound, allowing attendees to listen to trends instead of reading graphs or statistics.
We showcased three datasets:
- Flood damage areas across Thailand.
- PM2.5 air pollution trends (monthly average data from 96 monitoring stations nationwide, spanning January–October 2024).
- Cumulative wildfire burn areas in nine northern provinces (data spanning 2018–2024).
3. Project Showcase Talk: Behind the Data – Understanding Disasters Through Open Data
More than 10 projects from 9 organizations shared their experiences in using data-driven approaches to tackle Thailand’s disaster challenges. The discussion emphasized how data can be leveraged for disaster prevention, response, and long-term resilience.
At WeVis, our commitment to Open Data Day remains unwavering. We see this as an opportunity to advocate for open data policies and push Thailand closer to a future where transparency, accessibility, and data-driven decision-making are the norm. We hope to see Thailand fully embrace open data in the near future!
About Open Data Day
Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities. ODD is led by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) and the Open Knowledge Network.
As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date over one week. In 2025, a total of 189 events happened all over the world between March 1st and 7th, in 57 countries using 15+ different languages. All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.
For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group or join the Open Data Day Slack channel to ask for advice, share tips and get connected with others.
