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belgium-open-data

belgium-open-data

by vecture-be
OverviewSchemaSourceRelated ServersDiscussionsAdmin
JavaScript
Remote

Belgium Data Desk

Belgian public data, answered from the official sources.

Belgium Data Desk is a catalogue of about 21,700 Belgian open-data records (data.gov.be plus directly harvested federal, regional and city portals), a website to search it, and an MCP server that lets AI assistants search it and answer common questions from the authoritative publisher: Statbel figures, IRCEL-CELINE air quality, VMM flood maps and the Flemish subsurface database (DOV).

Hosted instance: https://data.vecture.be · MCP endpoint: https://data.vecture.be/mcp (no account, read-only)

claude mcp add --transport http belgium-open-data https://data.vecture.be/mcp

The public service combines a searchable catalogue, browser-based analysis and read-only MCP tools. No account is required, and the website does not use tracking scripts.

What the MCP server offers

Tool

Answers from

search_datasets, get_dataset, catalogue_overview

The catalogue: metadata, licence, contact, link checks. For 21 common needs the official source is pinned first with guidance (public/dataset-authority-v1.mjs).

preview_dataset

The first 64 KiB of a catalogued CSV/TSV, fetched from the publisher

belgian_statistics

Statbel: population, income, inflation, unemployment by municipality, province, region

air_quality

IRCEL-CELINE: now, forecast, annual means against WHO and EU limits

flood_risk

VMM's official flood-prone maps (Flanders)

subsurface_at_location, search_subsurface, get_subsurface_record

Databank Ondergrond Vlaanderen: soil, geology, boreholes, groundwater

search, fetch

Same catalogue, in the shape ChatGPT deep research expects

Answers start with key_facts built only from data in the same answer, and carry a provenance block. Catalogue results are metadata and link-check evidence, not claims that the data is correct.

Related MCP server: CKAN MCP Server

Run it locally

Requires Node 22+.

npm ci
npm test                 # offline unit tests, about 5 seconds
npm run snapshot         # download the current catalogue from data.vecture.be (about 25 MB)
npm run build:index      # build the MCP search shards and the static SEO pages
npm run dev              # http://localhost:8787 and http://localhost:8787/mcp

npm run harvest rebuilds the catalogue from the source portals instead of the snapshot. It takes a few minutes and some portals may not answer from every network; the harvest then keeps the previous records for that source.

Check a running server (yours or the hosted one):

npm run eval                                         # search relevance against eval-relevance/queries.json
node scripts/smoke-mcp.mjs http://localhost:8787     # every MCP tool once
node scripts/verify-live.mjs http://localhost:8787   # catalogue, relay, MCP and page integrity

Architecture

Logical architecture and editable diagrams describe the public interfaces, the indexed catalogue pipeline, live-source answer tools, shared evidence controls, and the release process.

The catalogue path harvests and checks source metadata before publishing search artifacts. Live answer tools query authoritative services with validated inputs, bounded upstream access, and source attribution. Both paths share consistent identifiers and provenance.

Where

What

scripts/harvest.mjs, scripts/national-dcat.mjs

Source adapters: CKAN, OpenDataSoft, OGC API, CSW and the national DCAT feed

scripts/curate.mjs, public/dataset-*.mjs

Curation: kinds, topics, licences, publishers, authoritative sources, synonyms

mcp-server.mjs

MCP protocol, tool definitions, search ranking

statbel.mjs, air.mjs, flood.mjs, dov.mjs, dov-search.mjs, place.mjs

Live answer tools

eval-relevance/queries.json

Real questions with the answer an expert would expect

scripts/test-*.mjs

Offline tests (npm test)

docs/reference/

Design notes: relay security model, SQL Lab, DOV details, catalogue audit

Contributing

You do not need to write code to help. The most useful contributions are a wrong answer you noticed, a better official source, a correction to a publisher or licence, or a real question the search gets wrong. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Hosting your own

Deployment configuration lives in wrangler.jsonc. For your own installation, configure PUBLIC_ORIGIN and the bindings for your account, then run npx wrangler deploy. Keep credentials in deployment secrets, not source control.

Licence

Code: MIT. Catalogue metadata and answers come from the publishers named in each record and keep their licences; every answer cites its source.

This server cannot be deployed

One endpoint for every MCP toolRayrun runs every MCP server behind one URL and holds the credentials. Each call is decided per client, tool, and argument, then recorded.ray.runAd

Maintenance

ActivityMaintained
ResponsivenessNo recent community issues

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