How the University of Veracruz used data visualisation to help develop the state’s Observatory on Food Security and Nutrition

Background

The University of Veracruz was established in 1944 and is considered the state’s premier institution of higher education. The university now has a presence in five university regions and 28 municipalities. The university works with many national and state-level organisations that are seeking to improve the lives of people living in Veracruz.

The Faculty of Nutrition, Xalapa, which belongs to the Universidad Veracruzana, works in partnership with other agencies and hosts the Centre for Food Security and Nutrition State of Veracruz (OBSAN). The Observatory’s mission is is to provide a platform that provides information on food security and nutrition in the State of Veracruz and to contributes to decision-making and policy development.

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Engaging a wide user audience through useful intelligence on employment and skills in the Capital

Background

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion is the UK’s leading not-for-profit company dedicated to tackling disadvantage and promoting social inclusion in the labour market. CESI is involved in a wide range of initiatives from the provision of training and events to the collection and analysis of UK labour market statistics.

One of the projects it has been involved with is the London Skills and Employment Observatory. The Observatory aims to provide a dedicated one-stop service to users looking to find out information on skills and employment issues in London. It also strives to identify information and research gaps and suggest how these are best addressed.

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How the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has used data reporting and visualization to develop its Disability and Health Data System (DHDS)

Background

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a government agency that was set up to protect health and promote quality of life through the prevention and control of disease, injury, and disability. Part of its work is to harvest expertise and information that will allow it to create tools that people and communities need to protect their health.

The CDC’s Disability and Health Program promotes health and wellness amongst people with disabilities. Presenting state level data on the health and health outcomes of people with disabilities is an important part of the program and has led to the development of Disability and Health Data System (DHDS). This is a state level disability surveillance tool designed to assist partners, researchers and the general public in the assessment of the health and wellness of people with disabilities.

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Results for 2012 and last three London mayor and London local elections now available for tablet users

 

The Greater London Authority’s Intelligence Unit has for the first time made elections results for 2012 and the last three London mayoral elections and the 2012 London local elections available online and available to tablet users with data visualization software InstantAtlas.

The results of Mayoral, Assembly list, and Constituency member elections since 2000 are now available on the London Datastore (http://bit.ly/I8LgZa). Data can be viewed at three levels of geography – constituency, borough and ward.

As well as a Flash-based version of the report the results can be viewed in InstantAtlas’s new HTML5 template allowing non-Flash users the ability to interact with the results data across a range of devices such as iPads and other tablets. User will also be able to easily extract a link to the report and post on their own web sites.

Data includes:

• the winner in each area (the candidate or party with most votes). This excludes second preference votes in the Mayoral election;
• the winning majority (the highest number of votes minus the second highest number of votes); the percentage turnout figure (not available at ward level since the lowest geographical level that postal votes are registered is borough level);
• the percentage of votes for each of the major parties.

Gareth Piggott, Senior Research and Statistical Analyst, General Statistics Team said: “This is the first time data from all three elections and all three levels of geography have been brought together for analysis in a single place. To make it easier to identify patterns and trends in the data, the results are presented using Instant Atlas mapping software, which also includes a data table, bar chart, and trend chart.”

Please note – The InstantAtlas HTML5 Template is currently scheduled for release late May 2012. However the release date is subject to change.

See the London Mayoral Election Results using the HTML 5 template

‘How Pembrokeshire County Council’s online and interactive data resource is helping to reduce ad hoc queries for information’

Background

Pembrokeshire County Council has a long-held ambition to put data into the public domain in a usable and easily-understandable format. Much of this data has geographic information and it has been a natural development to use data visualisation.

Adam Crocker, GIS/Information Manager in the Policy & Corporate Planning department says the council collects a large volume of data covering crime,agriculture, democracy, deprivation, economic indicators, the environment,income, population and housing. In some cases the data goes back to 2005.

Getting started

Once the council had decided to use InstantAtlas the team set about creating Statistical Maps and Tables – the section of the council’s website devoted to data sharing. “We thought about everyone who would be using it from members of the public to council employees,” he says.

His first impression of InstantAtlas was that the ability to carry out analysis over time would be particularly helpful to users. The first report Adam worked on was job vacancies which used data such as claimants for Job Seeker’s Allowance and he said it was straightforward once he got the data from ONS and Nomis.

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Northern Norway Regional Health Authority and the use of data reporting to provide an overview of the determinants of health for local communities

Background

The Northern Norway Regional Health Authority (Helse Nord RHF) is responsible for public hospitals in northern Norway. It was set up to provide the necessary specialist health services for the population of northern Norway and Svalbard. Its aim is to ensure that patients are treated at the right time and with the most appropriate treatment and for that reason understanding patterns of needs and determinants of health at a local level is paramount.

Getting started
We spoke to Erik R. Sund, project manager at the Regional Health Authority. He says the Authority uses data to provide an overview of health and health determinants at a local level and the Health Atlas of North Norway is a collaborative project between the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority and the counties Nordland, Troms and Finnmark.

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How data reporting is helping to drive efficiencies at Conwy Borough Council and ensure strategic planners have access to the latest local intelligence

Background

Conwy County Borough Council serves a total resident population of 111,800, 80 per cent of whom are settled along the coastal strip in the larger towns of Abergele, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno.

Mark Bowler is Principal Research Officer at the Borough Council and explains that when he joined in 2008 they had a website to provide information for council staff including: business managers; analysts involved in strategic planning and managers who were responsible for delivering development plans. The areas it covered included the 2001 Census, deprivation and economic development.

The website gave access to a series of spreadsheets containing local data by theme but Mark is the first to admit it wasn’t well structured. “It wasn’t easy to find what you wanted,” he says. “We realised we needed a new approach and this was not just about presentation but about the way that the data was being collected and updated.”

“I visited the LARIA annual conference where I came across InstantAtlas. Afterwards I attended a number of Welsh Government meetings where projects using InstantAtlas were being discussed so we decided to start using it,” says Mark.

Getting started

Having presented a business case and been given the go head, the team started to use InstantAtlas. Mark says the relatively small Research Unit put a lot of effort into getting the data up to date and ready to link with InstantAtlas. The Unit was fortunate that its efforts coincided with work being carried out by the Wales Data Unit. “The Wales Data Unit was setting up Infobase Cymru and we realised there was some overlap with what we were doing so we started working more closely with them,” says Mark. “The way this works is that we take more of an interest in local data whereas Infobase is more concerned with national data.”

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Using data reporting to turn a data rich resource into useful intelligence for council employees and partner organisations

 

Hertfordshire is located just to the north of London and stands astride the key road and rail routes between London and the major cities of the Midlands and North. It also borders the counties of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex. It has a population of just over 1 million. Hertfordshire County Council is committed to publishing its data to demonstrate transparency in operations and to allow access to information free of charge.

The council encourages greater use of data so that citizens are able to challenge and scrutinise what the council does. Much of this data is being made available through the Hertfordshire Local Information System (http://www.HertsLIS.org). Content includes economic statistics, community safety, socio-economic data, public health and area profiles, and demographic data. HertsLIS was developed by Community Information and Intelligence Unit (CIIU) which is managed by Bernard Thirkettle.

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OCSI Data Packs Version 2.4 gives Local Information Systems latest data

The Data Packs version 2.4 update provides users with the latest data, benchmarks and outputs available for all geographies.

Major new datasets in this version include:

• Pupil attainment by location of educational institution,
• Employment by occupation group.

Major updated datasets include:

• Mortality rates from key conditions,
• Local Alcohol Profile,
• Earnings by place of work and residence,
• Outcomes and performance measures for children in care and at risk children,
• Fuel Poverty rate.

The full lists of new and updated datasets, including details of all indicators in the Data Packs can be requested from us.

Major new datasets

Pupil attainment by location of education institution The Department for Education have published information about the GCSE and equivalent  results for pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 (KS4) in maintained schools in England. The results are for the 2010/11 academic year. Unlike previous pupil attainment results, contained

within the Data Packs, this data shows results based on location of where pupils went to school rather than their local residence. For the first time, the GCSE data also includes information on pupils taking the English Baccalaureate and on pupils making expected progress in English and Maths. Data is provided in Data Packs down to Local Authority level.

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UK InstantAtlas User Conferences – Review

This year’s InstantAtlas User Conferences were held in Rochdale at the Town Hall and in London at the London Council Buildings. Both offered attendees a mix of presentation and open discussion as well as the opportunity to learn more about examples of leading applications of InstantAtlas (IA) products from established users.

IAUC Rochdale review by John Patterson, Research & Intelligence Officer, Blackpool Council

Extracts taken from John’s review, the full post is available here

If you haven’t come across InstantAtlas(IA) before it’s currently one of two things:

• If you are like me and you have a very small budget for research software then it’s a desktop GIS tool which creates various interactive atlases (like this one).
• If you have a much larger budget, then it leans more toward a data storing, profile generating, atlas creating server software (like this one).

IAUC London review by Julian Tyndale-Biscoe

The London conference kicked off with a welcome and introduction from Stephen Croney Corporate GIS & Information Manager, London Borough of Newham and Geowise Managing Director, Mike Forster. With the London event hot on the heels of the northern conference Mike said both events were designed to help users understand how data visualisation is helping IA customers meet their goals. He said they were a great opportunity to hear about what developments were being planned for the suite of InstantAtlas products.

Read the full review here 

News – Google Maps Flash API

Since version 6.4 of InstantAtlas desktop, customers have been able to include Google maps as a background layer in their dynamic reports.  This has been a popular choice for many customers.  Unfortunately Google decided to deprecate the Google maps flash API in September 2011. The reason they gave was it wasn’t as popular as some of their other APIs.  This wasn’t necessarily a problem for us as the existing functionality worked well and Google will usually keep a deprecated service going for around three years.  However, in February 2012 Google stopped issuing new API keys.

So what does this mean:

-          Those who are already using Google maps in their flash dynamic reports can continue to do so. Their existing API key will still work.

-          Those who do not have an API key will not be able to use Google maps as a background layer in their flash dynamic reports and will have to use another source of background mapping.

-          Those who have a report on a particular website but want to move it to a new domain may be able to get a new API key by following the procedure outlined in this post.

-          Users of our new HTML 5 single map template (due out in April 2012) will have the option to use Google maps as a background layer as this uses a different API.

We are investigating using one of the other Google Maps APIs and hopefully we can re-introduce it to the flash templates at a later version.  In the meantime there are a number of other good sources of background mapping including ESRI ArcGIS Online services and WMS services including our own Ordnance Survey Open Data WMS. Please contact our support team if you need help with background mapping.

David Carey (on behalf of Jon Peltenburg, Technical Director – InstantAtlas)