🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

wsl-envidat-mcp 🌲❄️⛰️

MCP server connecting AI models to Swiss environmental research data from WSL via EnviDat — forest, snow, avalanches, natural hazards and biodiversity, no API key required.

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

Phase

This server is in Phase 1: Read-only Wrapper.

Phase-2 ideas (caching layer, semantic aggregation tool combining forest + snow + hazard data into a "Lage-Übersicht"): tracked under docs/.

Overview

The WSL (Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft / Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape) is one of Europe's leading environmental research institutes. Its open data platform EnviDat provides access to 1,000+ research datasets, time series of up to 130 years, and data from 6,000+ monitoring stations.

This MCP server exposes the EnviDat CKAN API as 10 tools and 2 resources, enabling AI assistants to search, filter and retrieve WSL research data by keyword, domain, or geographic bounding box — all without an API key.

Anchor demo query: "How was air quality and forest health around Schulhaus Leutschenbach in Zurich — and what does the WSL say about the current forest condition in the canton?"

Demo

Features

• 10 tools covering full-text search, domain-specific queries, spatial search, and curated thematic tools (avalanche, forest, natural hazards)

• 2 MCP resources for organizations and research domains

• 5 research domains: Forest · Biodiversity · Natural Hazards · Snow & Ice · Landscape

• 815+ datasets, time series since 1890, data from the SLF avalanche research institute

• No API key required — all data publicly accessible via open licenses

• Dual transport: stdio (Claude Desktop / local) + Streamable HTTP (cloud deployment)

• Model-agnostic: works with Claude, GPT-4, and any MCP-compatible client

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+

• pip or uv / uvx

• Internet connection (live API calls to envidat.ch)

Installation

# Recommended: uvx (no installation needed)
uvx wsl-envidat-mcp

# Or with pip
pip install wsl-envidat-mcp

# Development
git clone https://github.com/malkreide/wsl-envidat-mcp.git
cd wsl-envidat-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Quickstart

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "wsl-envidat": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["wsl-envidat-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop, then ask:

• "What WSL datasets exist on fatal avalanche accidents in Switzerland?"

• "Show me forest inventory data from the LFI for the canton of Zurich."

• "Which natural hazard research data does the SLF publish on EnviDat?"

• "Are there WSL datasets on drought conditions in summer 2022?"

• "What biodiversity data is available for alpine ecosystems?"

Configuration

No API key required. Optional environment variables:

Cloud Deployment (Streamable HTTP)

For use via claude.ai in the browser (e.g. on managed workstations without local software):

# Local: keep MCP_HOST at its default 127.0.0.1
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable-http PORT=8000 python -m wsl_envidat_mcp.server

# Container: bind to all interfaces inside the container only
MCP_TRANSPORT=streamable-http MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 PORT=8000 python -m wsl_envidat_mcp.server

💡 "stdio for the developer laptop, streamable-http for the browser."

⚠️ Multi-Replica Cloud Deployments: Session state lives in the server. Run a single replica or enable sticky sessions (Railway/Render setting, or sessionAffinity: ClientIP on Kubernetes Services).

⚠️ Multi-Tenant / Unauthenticated Streamable HTTP: This server has no auth layer (auth_model: none). Streamable HTTP without a reverse-proxy + OAuth/API-Gateway is intended only for single-user deployments (e.g. one user's claude.ai browser session). For multi-tenant use, front the server with an authenticating gateway.

Container image (recommended for cloud)

A hardened multi-stage image is published to GitHub Container Registry on every main push and semver tag. Runs as non-root (uid=1000), no build tools in the runtime layer, multi-arch (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64).

docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 \
  --read-only --tmpfs /tmp \
  --cap-drop=ALL --security-opt=no-new-privileges \
  ghcr.io/malkreide/wsl-envidat-mcp:latest

Kubernetes hardening (excerpt):

securityContext:
  runAsNonRoot: true
  runAsUser: 1000
  readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
  allowPrivilegeEscalation: false
  capabilities: { drop: ["ALL"] }

Available Tools

Example Use Cases

Resources

Valid domain values: wald, biodiversitaet, naturgefahren, schnee_eis, landschaft

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     ┌───────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────────┐
│   Claude / AI   │────▶│    WSL EnviDat MCP        │────▶│       envidat.ch          │
│   (MCP Host)    │◀────│    (MCP Server)           │◀────│                          │
└─────────────────┘     │                           │     │  CKAN API  (REST/JSON)   │
                        │  10 Tools · 2 Resources   │     │  Solr full-text search   │
                        │  Stdio | Streamable HTTP  │     │  1,000+ research datasets│
                        │                           │     │  815+ open datasets      │
                        │  server.py                │     │  Time series since 1890  │
                        │  api_client.py            │     └──────────────────────────┘
                        └───────────────────────────┘

Infrastructure Components

Project Structure

wsl-envidat-mcp/
├── src/wsl_envidat_mcp/
│   ├── __init__.py         # Package
│   ├── server.py           # MCP server — 10 tools, 2 resources
│   └── api_client.py       # HTTP client for EnviDat CKAN API
├── tests/
│   └── test_integration.py # 11 live API integration tests
├── .github/workflows/
│   └── ci.yml              # GitHub Actions CI (Python 3.11–3.13)
├── pyproject.toml          # Project config (hatchling build backend)
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── LICENSE                 # MIT
├── README.md               # This file (English)
└── README.de.md            # German version

Combination with Other MCP Servers

This server is part of the Swiss Open Data MCP Portfolio and integrates well with:

Known Limitations

• Solr search: OR is treated as a stopword — use single, specific search terms per query

• Domain search: Results depend on WSL's internal keyword tagging — not all datasets are tagged consistently

• Spatial search: Bounding box filtering is approximate; verify coordinates with individual dataset metadata

• Live API: All tools make live calls to envidat.ch — results depend on availability of the public API

• Languages: Dataset metadata is primarily in English and German; some older entries may be in German only

Safety & Limits

• Read-only: All tools perform HTTP GET requests only — no data is written, modified, or deleted on EnviDat.

• No personal data: The API returns research metadata, dataset descriptions, and download URLs. No personally identifiable information (PII) is processed or stored by this server.

• Rate limits: The EnviDat CKAN API is public without documented rate limits. Use limit and rows parameters conservatively. The server enforces a 30-second timeout per request.

• Data freshness: All tools make live API calls — results reflect the current state of the EnviDat catalog at query time. No caching is performed by this server.

• Terms of service: Data is subject to the EnviDat Terms of Use. Individual datasets are published under various open licenses (Creative Commons, CC0) — see dataset metadata.

• No guarantees: This is a community project, not affiliated with WSL or EnviDat. Availability depends on the upstream EnviDat API.

Testing

# Unit tests — offline, no network access, all CKAN responses mocked via respx
PYTHONPATH=src pytest -m "not live"

# Live integration tests — actual HTTP calls to envidat.ch
PYTHONPATH=src pytest -m live

# Linting
ruff check src/
ruff format --check src/

CI runs the offline suite on every PR. The live suite runs only on main pushes and manual workflow_dispatch triggers, so build status is not coupled to upstream availability.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

License

MIT License — see LICENSE

Data on EnviDat is published under various open licenses (Creative Commons, CC0) — see individual dataset metadata.

Author

Hayal Oezkan · malkreide

Credits & Related Projects

• Data: EnviDat – WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape

• Protocol: Model Context Protocol – Anthropic / Linux Foundation

• Portfolio: Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio