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Co-Lab Waikato data via eolas

Co-Lab is a 10-council shared-services consortium in the Waikato region — Hamilton City + Hauraki, Matamata-Piako, Ōtorohanga, Rotorua-Lakes, South Waikato, Taupō, Waikato, Waipa, and Waitomo district councils. eolas serves 79 datasets from this consortium, all via a single shared Koordinates portal. This is the largest single-portal council cluster in eolas.

If you're doing Waikato-region planning, hazard, or rural-development work — this is the source. Hamilton City + Taupō + Matamata-Piako (Putāruru / Tirau) dominate by dataset count.

What's in the catalogue

The Co-Lab portal serves each council's own datasets but normalises publishing format. Coverage by council:

Council Code Datasets Notes
Thames-Coromandel District tcdc 28 Most comprehensive — full DP suite + hazards + coastal
Matamata-Piako District mpdc 12 DP zones, designations, hazards
Taupō District tpdc 11 DP zones + geothermal protection + Tongariro overlay
Waikato District wdc 8 DP zones, designations
Waipa District wpa 4 Basic DP coverage
Ōtorohanga odc 2 Designated areas
Rotorua Lakes rlc 2 Council layers (separate from BoPRC's regional data)
South Waikato swdc 2 Basic
Hamilton City hcc 1 District plan zoning
Hauraki hdc 1 Reserve boundaries

Waikato Regional Council (WRC) — 8 datasets — covers regional environmental + hazard layers.

Browse the full list: eolas.fyi/datasets?source=Co-Lab+Waikato.

Refresh schedule

Weekly, Wednesday morning NZ time. The Co-Lab portal updates as each council publishes — typically monthly+ cadence. WRC publishes via its own portal but the schedule is similar.

meta = client.info("tcdc_dp_zones")
meta["last_refreshed_at"]

License

All Co-Lab + WRC data is CC-BY 4.0. Commercial use is fine; per-council attribution required.

Recommended attribution: "Source: [Council name] via Co-Lab Waikato, served via eolas (eolas.fyi). CC-BY 4.0."

Common patterns

Cross-council DP zone comparison

Co-Lab's strength is that all 10 councils use a normalised publishing schema, so you can cross-compare without per-council schema munging:

councils = ["tcdc", "mpdc", "tpdc", "wdc", "wpa"]
zones = {}
for code in councils:
    try:
        z = client.colab_waikato(f"{code}_district_plan_zones", as_sf=True)
        zones[code] = z["zone_name"].value_counts().head(5)
    except Exception:
        pass

import pandas as pd
print(pd.DataFrame(zones).fillna(0).astype(int))

Thames-Coromandel coastal exposure

import geopandas as gpd
tcdc_coastal = client.colab_waikato("tcdc_haz_coastal_inundation", as_sf=True)
tcdc_erosion = client.colab_waikato("tcdc_dp_coastal_erosion_current", as_sf=True)
# Combined coastal-risk footprint
combined_area_km2 = pd.concat([tcdc_coastal, tcdc_erosion]).to_crs("EPSG:2193").area.sum() / 1e6
print(f"Coastal-risk area in Thames-Coromandel: {combined_area_km2:.0f} km²")

Source-specific notes

  • Consortium = shared portal, not shared data ownership: each council retains ownership of its data; Co-Lab just runs the publishing pipeline. Attribution is per-council.
  • TCDC dominates by count: Thames-Coromandel publishes more layers than the others — full DP2025 area-overlay suite, hazards, coastal. Other councils publish a more minimal core.
  • WRC is published separately: Waikato Regional Council uses its own portal — most regional-scale layers (river flows, water allocation, biodiversity) live there. Look for wrc_* prefixed datasets within this cluster.
  • Hamilton City has only 1 dataset (so far): that's not because HCC has no open data — they publish via their own data.hamilton.govt.nz. Only the DP zoning currently crosswalks into Co-Lab. Expanding HCC coverage is on the eolas roadmap.
  • Rotorua Lakes appears in two clusters: most Rotorua datasets are in Bay of Plenty Councils (because it's on BoPRC's portal), but the council also publishes via Co-Lab. Not duplicates — different data, different portals.
  • Taupō geothermal protection: tpdc_*_geothermal layers (where present) regulate the geothermal resource — important for tourism / energy / consenting analysis.

Where to find more