Data Collection & Sharing

WeatherCitizen is an app for sharing crowd-sourced information from mobile devices.

NOTE: Every time you make an observation using WeatherCitizen, the app records your device’s geographic location (GPS coordinates) and the time. This location and time information is then publicly posted to WeatherCitizen data server if you choose to upload your observation.

Currently, all data uploaded from the WeatherCitizen app to the WeatherCitizen data server is publicly available for use without restriction. This includes any uploaded text, audio, images, video, geolocation, mobile device sensors, user profile information, and mobile device information.

If you do not wish to share this information, you should refrain from using the WeatherCitizen app.

The WeatherCitizen application collects location data, device sensor data, and hardware status when a user submits a snapshot observation or is recording a session observation. When a user submits a snapshot observation, the application will also collect user input text, images, and audio. The application does not collect or upload data outside of these processes.

All collected data is uploaded to a centralized data server for analysis, presentation, and sharing. Currently, all data uploaded to the WeatherCitizen data server is publically available for use without restriction. Uploaded data can be viewed and downloaded from the WeatherCitizen Data Map.

Disable Data Upload

By default, the WeatherCitizen app is configured to upload data to the server when a network connection is available. Data uploading can be disabled on the Settings page of the app.

To disable data uploading, navigate to the Settings page of the app and set the Upload Records option to never. When Upload Records is set to never, no data will be uploaded to the data server. Data will still be recorded to the local storage of the mobile device and can be exported to a local CSV or JSON file.

See the Settings section of the configure tutorial for more details.

More Information

WeatherCitizen aims to be clear and open about data collection practices and policies. Please see the Legal Page for more information on the project, and contact info@weathercitizen.org with any further questions.