The Census Dissemination Unit (CDU) has been experimenting with the GMapCreator software from the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis to create mashups between Google Maps and census data, making the data easier to visualise.
As there is no single digital boundary dataset for Great Britain for the 2001 census geographies, the CDU team took data from UKBORDERS for the separate countries and ‘stitched’ them together. Data was then added from the Key Statistics Table KS005 Country of Birth to create a map showing population density for persons born in the Republic of Ireland.
The output from the GMapCreator software was adapted to produce a web page for the CDU website; and the map was also uploaded to Maptube where users can combine it with other available maps.
In the future, the CDU team plans to create more maps relating to other subject areas as a means of presenting the census data in an interesting and accessible way. For more information, visit the following:
