The Boston ArchiveBoston, Massachusetts

Dataset

Fire Departments

City of Boston fire department locations.

Dataset

Publisher
Boston Maps
Spatial coverage
Boston, Massachusetts
Fields
28
Keywords
bfd, boston, bostonmaps, ckan, departments, fire
Publisher's page
https://data.boston.gov/dataset/fire-departments

Artifacts

“Preserved” means the archive holds the bytes and their digest. “Referenced” means it holds the record of them and nothing more. The archive does not claim a holding it cannot prove.

FormatPreservationSizeDigestSource
ArcGIS GeoServices REST APIreferenced——source
CSVpreserved105291a3e4edc50b65ebb89bc9e4ef2b4cc2e2b01cbc4f0cde5e645ae9002b936d88dsource
GeoJSONpreserved2485917baa165034209a8e82e8dead38dfbabf0a16a5c5238d715cddc68f40a0901efsource
HTMLreferenced——source
KMLpreserved8978cb2874e3601cf06cb184fcecf6c54198c6b697d3b7462b75b6a6430db0c4763bsource
SHPreferenced——source

Column dictionary

The publisher's own dictionary, preserved verbatim. The archive does not reword a schema into its own vocabulary — how the publisher named a column is evidence about the publisher.

ColumnTypeDescription
OBJECTID_1text
BFD_IDtext
MAP_IDtext
MAPCODEtext
LOCCODEtext
LOCDEPTtext
LOCNAMEtext
LOCCONTACTtext
LOCPHONEtext
LOCSTNOtext
LOCADDRtext
LOCOWNERtext
LOCWARDtext
LOCPARCLtext
LOCPRECTtext
LOCPLANtext
STUDYtext
ABOVEtext
ABOVE_DESCtext
SOURCEtext
GEOADDRESStext
PDtext
CT90text
XCOORDtext
YCOORDtext
shape_wkttext
POINT_Xtext
POINT_Ytext

The complete dictionary, exactly as the publisher words it, is served as its own holding at /asset/a4c01d961a5f19aec76854393ab9e047/fire-departments-columns.json — 1841 bytes, SHA-256 a4c01d961a5f19ae…, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.

Questions this record answers

Each answer is composed only from fields this record carries, and names the attestation for what it says. A question the record cannot answer from its own attested content is not asked here. Where a boundary is described as official it was promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it and is not amended by anything on the vernacular layer; where it is described as vernacular it is held by attestation alone and amends no official boundary.

Who publishes Fire Departments, and under what license?

Boston Maps publishes it. The archive accessioned it under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0 (public domain), and holds the publisher's own column dictionary verbatim rather than reworded into the archive's vocabulary — how a publisher names a column is evidence about the publisher.

Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.

What does Fire Departments cover?

In space, Boston, Massachusetts.

Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.

How large is Fire Departments?

28 columns, as the publisher's own catalog reports them.

Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.

Can the archive hand back the bytes of Fire Departments?

Yes, for 3 of 6 distributions. Each preserved artifact is served at its own address with the digest recorded at retrieval emitted in an x-archive-sha256 header, and is handed over as an attachment: preserved material is evidence, not content, and is never rendered on this origin.

Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.

What does the archive hold for Fire Departments, and under what license?

The Boston Archive holds this record of Fire Departments from City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0 (public domain). 3 recorded transforms stand between the retrieved bytes and this record. Attribution is due to City of Boston.

Attested by: City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston), retrieved 2 September 2026, under Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0.

Identity

Identifier
urn:lemay:boston:dataset:fire-departments
Canonical URL
https://boston.fyi/dataset/fire-departments
As JSON
https://boston.fyi/dataset/fire-departments.json
Version
2 · last changed 13 September 2026

Provenance

Source
City of Boston Open Data Portal (Analyze Boston) — source of record
License
Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence (PDDL) 1.0 (public_domain)
Retrieved
2 September 2026
Source identifier
fire-departments
Attribution
City of Boston
Rights as stated
Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)

Transform ladder

#OperationDescriptionTool
1fetchretrieved the dataset's metadata record from the CKAN package_show endpointarchive-ingest 0.1.0
2normalizemapped the portal's catalog fields onto the archive's Dataset record; the publisher's own wording and column dictionary are preserved verbatimarchive-ingest 0.1.0
3externalize-column-dictionaryThe publisher's 28-column dictionary left the inline page graph and became a preserved holding at /asset/a4c01d961a5f19aec76854393ab9e047/fire-departments-columns.json, served verbatim with its own digest. The record's stored field schema is unchanged; the graph now addresses it instead of carrying it.archive-ingest 0.1.0