🇨🇭 Part of the Swiss Public Data MCP Portfolio

🏙️ Zurich Open Data MCP Server

🌐 English | Deutsch

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server providing AI-powered access to Open Data from the City of Zurich, Switzerland.

Enables Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP-compatible AI assistants to directly query 900+ datasets, geodata, parliamentary proceedings, council resolutions, tourism data, linked data, and real-time environmental and mobility information from the City of Zurich. 23 Tools (+3 deprecated aliases), 5 Resources, 6 APIs.

Demo

✨ Features

CKAN Open Data (data.stadt-zuerich.ch)

• zurich_search_datasets – Full-text search with Solr syntax across 900+ datasets
• zurich_get_dataset – Complete metadata and download URLs for a dataset
• zurich_datastore_query – Query tabular data directly (filters, sorting)
• zurich_datastore_sql – SQL queries on the DataStore
• zurich_list_categories – Browse 19 thematic categories
• zurich_list_tags – Tag-based thematic search

Real-Time Environmental Data

• zurich_weather_live – 🌤️ Current weather (temperature, humidity, pressure, rain) from 4 UGZ stations
• zurich_air_quality – 🌬️ Live air quality (NO₂, O₃, PM10, PM2.5) with WHO thresholds
• zurich_water_weather – 🌊 Lake Zurich data (water temperature, level, wind) every 10 min

Real-Time Mobility Data

• zurich_pedestrian_traffic – 🚶 Pedestrian counts on Bahnhofstrasse (3 locations, hourly)
• zurich_vbz_passengers – 🚊 VBZ public transit ridership (800,000+ records, all lines/stops)
• zurich_parking_live – 🅿️ Real-time occupancy of 36 parking garages (ParkenDD)

Geoportal (WFS Geodata)

• zurich_geo_layers – 📍 List 14 available geodata layers
• zurich_geo_features – 📍 Fetch GeoJSON features (schools, districts, playgrounds, climate data, etc.)

City Parliament (Paris API)

• zurich_parliament_search – 🏛️ Search parliamentary proceedings (interpellations, motions, postulates)
• zurich_parliament_members – 🏛️ Search council members (party, commissions, mandates)

Zurich Tourism

• zurich_tourism – 🏨 Attractions, restaurants, hotels, events (Schema.org data, 4 languages)

Linked Data (SPARQL)

• zurich_sparql – 📊 SPARQL queries on the statistical linked data endpoint (endpoint not productive yet — the tool is not registered by default; opt in with the environment variable ZURICH_OPENDATA_ENABLE_SPARQL=1)

Stadtratsbeschlüsse (Council Resolutions)

• zurich_strb_search – 📜 Full-text search of public council resolutions (title, department, date range)
• zurich_strb_by_department – 📜 List all resolutions of a department (e.g. SSD, FD, PRD)
• zurich_strb_detail – 📜 Single resolution by NNNN/YYYY number

(The former names search_stadtratsbeschluesse, get_beschluesse_by_departement and get_stadtratsbeschluss_detail remain available as deprecated aliases until the next major release.)

Analysis Tools

• zurich_analyze_datasets – Comprehensive analysis: relevance, recency, data structure
• zurich_catalog_stats – Catalog overview with statistics
• zurich_find_school_data – Curated search for education-related datasets

MCP Resources

• zurich://dataset/{name} – Dataset metadata
• zurich://category/{group_id} – Category details
• zurich://parking – Current parking data
• zurich://geo/{layer_id} – GeoJSON geodata (14 layers)
• zurich://tourism/categories – Tourism categories

🚀 Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• pip or uv

Install

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/malkreide/zurich-opendata-mcp.git
cd zurich-opendata-mcp

# Install
pip install -e .

# Or with uv
uv pip install -e .

⚙️ Configuration

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zurich-opendata": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "zurich_opendata_mcp.server"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Alternatively, using the installed command:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zurich-opendata": {
      "command": "zurich-opendata-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (CLI)

claude mcp add zurich-opendata -- python -m zurich_opendata_mcp.server

Cursor / VS Code

Add to .vscode/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zurich-opendata": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "zurich_opendata_mcp.server"]
    }
  }
}

💬 Example Queries

Once configured, you can ask Claude:

Open Data

• "What datasets are available about schools in Zurich?"
• "Show me school holidays for public schools"
• "Analyze the available geodata"

Real-Time Data

• "What's the current temperature in Zurich?" → zurich_weather_live
• "How is the air quality today?" → zurich_air_quality
• "What's the water temperature in Lake Zurich?" → zurich_water_weather
• "How many parking spaces are free right now?" → zurich_parking_live
• "How many people are on Bahnhofstrasse right now?" → zurich_pedestrian_traffic

Geodata

• "Show me all school facilities in Zurich as GeoJSON" → zurich_geo_features
• "What geodata layers are available?" → zurich_geo_layers
• "Where are the playgrounds in Zurich?"

City Parliament

• "What parliamentary motions about schools were filed?" → zurich_parliament_search
• "Which council members belong to the SP party?" → zurich_parliament_members

Council Resolutions (Stadtratsbeschlüsse)

• "Find council resolutions about Volksschule from 2025" → zurich_strb_search
• "List all SSD resolutions in 2025" → zurich_strb_by_department
• "Show council resolution 1203/2025" → zurich_strb_detail

Tourism

• "What restaurants does Zurich Tourism recommend?" → zurich_tourism

🔗 Data Sources

📊 Available Data Categories

📍 Available Geo Layers

Source of truth: GEOPORTAL_LAYERS in src/zurich_opendata_mcp/config.py.

🏗️ Project Structure

zurich-opendata-mcp/
├── src/zurich_opendata_mcp/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── app.py               # Shared FastMCP instance
│   ├── server.py            # Console entry + back-compat re-exports
│   ├── config.py            # Endpoints, layer maps, resource IDs
│   ├── http_client.py       # Shared httpx client + CKAN wrapper
│   ├── formatters.py        # CKAN→model mapping + Markdown rendering
│   ├── models.py            # Pydantic structured-output models
│   ├── clients/             # API clients: paris, sparql, tourism, wfs
│   └── tools/               # @mcp.tool implementations:
│                            #   catalog, datastore, geo, parliament,
│                            #   realtime, sparql, strb, tourism,
│                            #   resources (zurich:// URIs)
├── tests/                   # respx round-trip, unit and live-marked tests
├── audits/                  # Code-audit reports
├── .github/workflows/       # ci.yml + publish.yml (Trusted Publisher)
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md / README.de.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md / .de.md
├── SECURITY.md / .de.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CLAUDE.md                # Project conventions for Claude
├── LICENSE
└── claude_desktop_config.json

🧪 Development

# Install dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Unit + validation tests (no network)
pytest tests/ -m "not live"

# Live integration tests (against live APIs — opt-in)
pytest tests/ -m live

# Linting
ruff check src/ tests/

Safety & Limits

• Read-only: All tools perform HTTP GET requests only — no data is written, modified, or deleted.
• No personal data: The APIs return open civic datasets (parking occupancy, weather readings, parliamentary proceedings). No personally identifiable information (PII) is processed or stored by this server.
• Rate limits: CKAN Solr search and ParkenDD are public APIs without documented rate limits; use rows and limit parameters conservatively. The server enforces a 30s timeout per request; transient upstream errors (connect failures, HTTP 502/503/504) are retried once with a short backoff.
• Data freshness: Real-time tools (parking, weather, air quality) reflect the upstream source at query time. Measurement data is never cached; only the lookup of the current per-year UGZ resource ID (weather/air quality) is cached in-process for 24h.
• Terms of service: Data is subject to the ToS of each source — data.stadt-zuerich.ch, ParkenDD, gemeinderat-zuerich.ch. All City of Zurich data is published under CC0 (Open by Default since 2021).
• No guarantees: This server is a community project, not affiliated with the City of Zurich or any of the API providers. Availability depends on upstream APIs.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md (Deutsch).

🔒 Security

Read-only, no PII, no authentication, a fixed set of public-data endpoints. See SECURITY.md (Deutsch) for the full security posture and accepted-risk decisions.

📜 License

MIT License — see LICENSE. All data used is published under open licenses (CC0 / Open by Default since 2021).

👤 Author

Hayal Oezkan · malkreide

Powered by Model Context Protocol • 6 APIs • 23 Tools • 5 Resources

Installation

Run via uv's uvx — no clone or manual install needed. Add to your MCP client config (mcpServers for Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf; use a top-level servers key for VS Code in .vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zurich-opendata-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "zurich-opendata-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}