In 2021 there will be a 10 year population census in the UK. The data from this census will be published across tens of thousands of statistical neighbourhoods (officially "output areas"), which are identified only by obscure statistical codes familiar only to experts.
In this hands-on workshop participants will have an opportunity to contribute to the process of crowdsouring meaningful names for 32,000 statistical neighbourhoods in England and Wales, in a project intended to help the general public access census data at a granular level and better understand their own local area.
This is an ongoing project that will eventually contribute to making Census 2021 data more accessible and meaningful to the general public in the UK. In addition, the tools that we produce will be open source and made available to people pursuing similar initiatives in other countries.
What is the goal and/or outcome of your session?:The goal of this session is to introduce participants to the idea of statistical neighbourhoods, the benefits and challenges of naming them, and to show how they can directly contribute to our ongoing project to crowdsource names for statistical neighbourhoods in the UK.
It is also our intention that our project can also inspire similar efforts in other countries.
How will you deal with varying numbers of participants in your session?:The session will be held in two parts. 1. A short presentation/Q+A, and 2. A hands-on introduction to the online tool(s) that we are developing to crowdsource statistical neighbourhood names. The online tool will be able to deal with large numbers of concurrent users. The Q+A may have to be streamlined in the event of large numbers of participants, and we may break the group down into sub-groups for the hands-on element, to allow for troubleshooting.
Architect and UX designer working on census data visualisation at the Office for National Statistics. Previously a founding partner with Visualizing Impact and co-founder of Palestine Open Maps.
Statistical researcher working at the House of Commons Library in the UK Parliament.