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UpperBlue ehf.
Iceland punches well above its weight in open data. For a country of 380,000 people, the volume of publicly available, machine-readable datasets is impressive — and largely underutilized by the private sector. If you're building data products or just curious about what's available, here's a tour of the landscape.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office is arguably the richest single source of open data in the country. Their APIs serve real-time earthquake data (updated every few minutes), weather observations from stations across the country, forecast model outputs, and hydrological measurements. The seismic data alone is remarkable — Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so the earthquake catalog is dense, with thousands of events per week during active periods.
The data comes in clean JSON formats and the APIs are well-documented. At UpperBlue, we pull earthquake data, forecast model catalogs, and weather observations into our own API and serve them through interactive dashboards on this site.
Orkustofnun maintains the national borehole registry — over 15,000 boreholes drilled across Iceland since systematic recording began. Each record includes location coordinates, depth, temperature measurements, water chemistry, and drilling metadata. This is invaluable data for geothermal research, construction planning, and environmental monitoring.
The registry is available through their website and we've built searchable interfaces on top of it. For a volcanic island that heats 90% of its buildings with geothermal water, this data has direct practical value.
Hagstofa runs one of the better national statistics portals in the Nordics. Their PxWeb API gives programmatic access to population data, economic indicators, trade statistics, labor market data, and much more. The fuel sales data we visualize on this site comes from their energy statistics — monthly breakdowns of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel consumption going back decades.
UST operates air quality monitoring stations across Iceland and publishes measurements in near real-time. You can get PM10, PM2.5, NO2, SO2, and other pollutant concentrations from stations in the capital area and beyond. The data is particularly interesting during volcanic eruptions, when SO2 levels spike dramatically.
The national registry publishes address data, postal codes, and property information. The Icelandic address system is unique — street addresses in Reykjavík follow the European model, but rural addresses still use farm names that have been in use for centuries. The geocoded address database is useful for mapping applications and logistics.
LMÍ provides topographic data, aerial imagery, and geodetic reference systems. Their IS50 dataset is a comprehensive 1:50,000 topographic map of the entire country in vector format. They also provide DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data and orthophotos. Much of this is available under open licenses through their data portal.
Despite the wealth of data, there are gaps. Real-time public transport data for Strætó (the Reykjavík bus system) has improved but GTFS-RT feeds are still inconsistent. Health data is largely locked behind institutional access. And while individual datasets are well-structured, there's no unified national data portal that aggregates everything — you need to know where to look.
The opportunity for developers is significant. Most of these datasets have APIs but few have polished consumer-facing applications. The earthquake data could power a much better public alert system. The borehole data could be integrated into property databases. The air quality data could feed into health apps.
At UpperBlue, we've built our maps platform and this site's demo section as proof of what's possible when you combine these open datasets with modern web technology. The data is there — it just needs builders.