Sources and licences
Altaica Urban republishes the planning and environmental permits of the Brussels-Capital Region from Nova, the region's open data service, under a CC-0 licence — that is, in the public domain. Addresses are normalised with UrbIS, also CC-0. The data is reloaded every night. This site is an enriched copy: where it differs from the official source, the source is right.
The primary source: Nova
Nova is the open data service for Brussels permits. It is run by Paradigm, the regional IT agency, and fed by urban.brussels, Bruxelles Environnement and the 19 communes. Access is open, with no key and no quota.
| Layer | Content | Records |
|---|---|---|
| Nova:PlanningPermits | Planning permits (PU, PFD…), 130 fields | 422,600 |
| Nova:EnvironmentalPermits | Environmental permits (classes 1A, 1B, 2, 3), 57 fields | 94,264 |
| Nova:vm_nova_ru_view | Requests for urban-planning information, with cadastral references | 33,624 |
WFS 2.0.0, JSON output, coordinates in EPSG:31370 (Belgian Lambert 72). Endpoint: https://geoservices-others.irisnet.be/geoserver/Nova/ows
We hard-code no code list. The sub-type, status and inquiry-status labels are rebuilt on every load from the distinct values present in the data, in French and Dutch.
Secondary sources
| Source | Used for | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| UrbIS (datastore.brussels) | Address normalisation, building footprint linking, street and commune reference | CC-0, reloaded monthly |
| OpenStreetMap (Brussels extract) | Basemap, self-hosted, wherever a map is shown | ODbL, attribution shown on the map |
Licences
Nova and UrbIS data is published under CC-0: it is in the public domain and its reuse carries no conditions. We credit the source as a courtesy, not as an obligation.
The credit we use, and the one we ask you to carry if you publish figures taken from this site: Source: Région de Bruxelles-Capitale – Nova (urban.brussels, Bruxelles Environnement, communes), CC-0.
The basemap is under a different licence: OpenStreetMap data is published under ODbL, which requires attribution and share-alike for derived databases.
What we produce ourselves — the work-type classification, the derived measures, the reconstructed histories, the text of this site — is not CC-0 and falls under the terms of use.
How often it is refreshed
The full feed is pulled every night at 03:00 Brussels time. Enrichment finishes around 06:00 and the statistics around 06:30. A case changed at the region therefore appears here by the following morning at the latest.
Every snapshot is kept as received, compressed, before any transformation. The database is rebuilt from those files, which is what makes a load replayable and any figure on the site explainable.
If a nightly run fails, the site keeps serving the last good snapshot rather than an empty page. The data may then be more than 24 hours old.
What we add
- A classification of the works into 21 types, produced automatically from the project description.
- Derived measures: net floor area by use, housing units created where the description states them, durations between steps.
- The history of changes, which the source does not keep: it publishes only the current state of each case.
- Normalised addresses and the links between cases belonging to one project.
These fields are produced by us, not by the administration. The method, its limits and its measured error rate are described on the Methodology page.
What we do not publish
- No applicant, owner or architect names: the open feed contains none, and we neither collect nor infer any.
- No extraction from the openpermits.brussels website: we use only the open data service.
- Requests for urban-planning information are never shown at address or parcel level, only in aggregate, because such a request usually signals a sale in progress.
- No statistic derived from fewer than ten cases.
Updated on 13 September 2026