Category: Data

How big is your society?

The “Big Society” features as a key part of the coalition government’s legislative programme, aiming to decentralise control of public services and to empower local communities to manage and deliver services that better meet local needs. Over the past twelve months I have been involved in an AHRC Funded Connected Communities project involving researchers at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Portsmouth, where we have been examining the various ways in the “Big Society” concept can be defined, measured, and more importantly mapped.

As part of this ongoing work we have created the following website (http://measuringbigsociety.org/) containing a short animated film about the Big Society and a survey where you can tell us how well you think Big Society will develop in your area?

Please visit http://measuringbigsociety.org/ and complete the survey!

Spatial Analysis Using the National Pupil Database

A month or so ago (again, trying to catch up here!) I spoke at the annual PLUG conference in London. As always, lots of very interesting talks about National Pupil Database applications and developments. All the talks are available on the PLUG website – link. My slides were as follows…

Spatial Analysis Using the National Pupil Database
View more presentations from Alex Singleton

NYC Cab Flow Data

NYC Yellow Cabs have GPS fitted to them which have been tracked for the past year or so… anyway, there is an excellent article on this in the New York Times with obligatory map visualization:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/nyregion/03icab.html

map (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/02/nyregion/taxi-map.html?ref=nyregion)

If we assume that taxi are the generally present in areas where people
are, this could be a useful source of population mobility and certainly the sort of data which may be useful in real-time geodemographics.

My Google Street View Chronology

I am very excited by the massive expansion of Google Street View which I blogged about elsewhere. It is a good opportunity to present my Google Street View chronology:

1980 – 1988

Alnwick, Northumberland

1988-1990

Alnmouth, Northumberland

1990-1993

Allestree, Derby

1993-1998

Shenley Church End, Milton Keynes

1998-1999

Frimley, Surrey

1999-2003

Central Manchester, Manchester

Hulme, Manchester

Longsight, Manchester

Withington, Manchester

2003-2004

Worcester, Worcestershire

2004-2005

Witney, Oxfordshire

2005-2006

West Hampstead, London

2006-2010

Catford, London

London Data Store Mashup

I have blogged about the newly launched London Data Store elsewhere, however I thought I would post a quick (actually not so quick given our ArcGIS liscence server died today) post about a mashup I created today using the CASA software GMapcreator and website Maptube.

Anyway, you can view the map here – it shows deliberate fire incidents in London.

Printed Wikipedia

When I was in primary school, the height of geek cool was to be a proud owner of a leather bound set of Encyclopedia Britannica. By the time I reached secondary school, this had been replaced with the Microsoft Encarta cd-rom and access to a family PC. The recent work of Rob Matthews (left) as part of his Brighton Graduate Degree Show reminds me how far we have come.