RESEARCH & EDUCATION
WorldEye data for research and teaching
WorldEye indexes 74,229 public cameras around the world. This page documents the real routes to that catalogue's metadata and geographic data for universities, educators and researchers — what exists, the terms it travels under, and how to request access. Nothing here is self-serve that is not described as such, and no route on this page bypasses the rights of the agencies that operate the cameras.
What is available
The public catalogue — free on the web
Every camera in the catalogue is browsable on the live globe, in the country directory and in the live camera index. Each camera carries public metadata: its name, city and country, its geographic coordinates, and the source that operates it. For teaching, the site is free to use in class with no account — see WorldEye for Educators.
The camera feed and API — Enterprise routes
Programmatic access is the Enterprise camera feed. You build collections of cameras in the Enterprise dashboard — searching the catalogue by name, city or country, with each camera's rights verdict shown before you add it — and read them through three doors, all returning the same rights-filtered payload:
- An embeddable live player (/embed/<token>) that renders a collection as a camera wall on your own site, with per-camera agency attribution.
- A private JSON data feed (GET /api/feed/<token>) — the feed token is the credential, and regenerating it revokes the old one everywhere at once.
- A REST API (GET /api/v1/collections/<id>/cameras) authenticated with an API key (Authorization: Bearer wek_…). A key reads only its owner's collections, and a revoked key stops working immediately.
Research and education access is arranged through these same routes — there is no separate research API. Access follows the collection owner's Enterprise subscription: if it lapses, its feeds and API keys stop until it is renewed.
Metadata in every payload
Each response carries the collection's name, a generation timestamp, a count, and one record per camera with these fields:
| id | The camera's stable catalogue identifier. |
| name | The camera's name as listed by its source. |
| city / country | Where the camera is located. |
| lat / lng | The camera's geographic coordinates. |
| streamUrl / streamType | The live stream URL and its kind (jpg, hls, iframe, mjpeg or mp4). Null when the camera is snapshot-only. |
| snapshotUrl | A current-still URL served by WorldEye's frame route. Null for stream-only cameras. |
| attribution | The operating agency to credit for the camera — for example, “Alberta 511 via WorldEye”. |
| source | The catalogue source label the camera's rights verdict was taken from. |
Cameras that fail the rights check are never silently dropped: the payload returns them in an excluded list, each with its id, name and the reason it did not ship.
The terms framework
The source's terms govern. WorldEye does not own the cameras. Each camera belongs to the agency or operator listed as its source, and that source's licence and terms decide what may be done with its feed and metadata. WorldEye's own grant never widens a source's terms.
Eligibility is decided per camera. A rights registry records a redistribution verdict for every source — most government traveller-information feeds (state and provincial DOTs, national road authorities, federal sources) are cleared on their open-data posture; some sources carry their own licence terms on top, such as Finland's Fintraffic, whose Digitraffic data is CC BY 4.0 with attribution to Fintraffic/Digitraffic required. The verdict is evaluated live each time a payload is built, so a source whose posture changes leaves every feed, embed and API response at once.
Default is excluded. A source with no clearance on file — a commercial webcam network, an unreviewed scrape, a third-party broadcast — stays out of every payload until its terms have been reviewed. Cameras sourced from Windy Webcams are structurally excluded: Windy's terms grant no commercial redistribution.
Attribution is required. Every camera in a payload carries its attribution string (for example, “Alberta 511 via WorldEye”), and every response states: “Camera data via WorldEye. Credit each camera's listed source.” Republication — in a paper, a dashboard or a dataset — must keep each camera's source credited.
How to request access
Email passiveincomewai@gmail.com — or use the contact page — with the subject line “Research access — <your institution>” and a short outline covering:
- Your institution and department or programme
- What you are studying or teaching, in a sentence or two
- The data you need — regions or subjects, and whether you need metadata, live streams, or both
- How the data would be used: teaching, publication, or internal research
- Your timeframe
Requests are reviewed individually. Submitting a request does not guarantee access, and no education pricing, quota or response time is published — what we can offer for a project is confirmed in our reply, and any arrangement uses the Enterprise routes and the terms framework above.
Citing WorldEye data
If WorldEye data appears in a paper, thesis, article or dataset, cite the catalogue and the access date, and keep each camera's listed source credited — the source agencies are the data's originators. A reference in this form works:
For a specific collection or feed, cite the collection name alongside the catalogue. How the catalogue is built — indexing, deduplication, feed checks, coordinates and the removal of outdated cameras — is documented on the camera-data methodology page, which is the page to point methods sections and reviewers at.
Studying the catalogue itself — coverage, gaps, source mix — is welcome research use of the public site. If your design needs the underlying metadata at scale, request access first rather than scraping: the feed exists so the sources' terms travel with the data.
Research access FAQs
Is there a free API for researchers?
No. WorldEye does not publish a free or self-serve API tier. Programmatic access — the data feed and the REST API — is part of the Enterprise camera feed, because every camera it carries has to pass the rights registry first. The WorldEye website itself is free for everyone, including classroom use, with no account needed.
Can I download the whole camera dataset?
There is no public bulk download. Dataset access is provided as collections you build in the Enterprise dashboard and read through the embed player, the JSON feed, or the API. If a project needs something those routes do not cover, ask in your request — requests are reviewed individually, and anything supplied is limited to rights-cleared records under the sources' terms.
Which cameras may I republish or redistribute?
Only the cameras the rights registry clears for redistribution. The feed enforces this for you: cleared cameras ship with their attribution, and every pick that does not ship is returned in an excluded list with the reason. Cameras sourced from Windy Webcams are never cleared for redistribution, and sources whose terms have not been reviewed are held by default.
Is there an education discount or a special research tier?
No education tier or discount is published, and access is not automatic. Research and education requests are reviewed individually against the same access routes described on this page — contact us with the outline above and we will confirm what we can offer for your project.
Can my students use WorldEye in class?
Yes. The public site — the live 3D globe, cameras, flights, satellites and weather — is free to use in teaching with no signup. Our educators' page collects classroom uses and lesson starters.
Explore more
Enterprise Camera Feed
Collections, the embed player, the data feed and API keys — the access routes in full.
WorldEye for Educators
Classroom uses of the free public site, with lesson starters for geography and earth science.
Live Camera Index
The published index of the camera network, country by country.
Contact
Reach the WorldEye team — the same route used for research-access requests.