Census Aggregate Information Resource Demonstrator
This is a one year, ESRC Census Programme funded research project running from June 2008 until July 2009.
Aims
- To explore the feasibility and potential of exploiting metadata to make aggregate outputs from UK censuses more understandable, explorable, accessible, and therefore more usable to the academic and wider community.
- To use the demonstrator to persuade the UK Census Agencies to look at the role of metadata and its use in the 2011 Census.
Objectives
- Retro-engineer 2001 Census outputs to create a rich set of metadata.
- Encode the resulting metadata using standards compliant XML schemas.
- Provide an efficient database storage solution.
- Expose the data and metadata as an explorable information resource.
- Create a simple example application that utilises the information resource.
Potential Benefits
- Greater understanding of the census data.
- Improved ability to explore the census.
- Greater information accessibility.
- Improved information usability.
- An increase in the usage of the census.
- Flexibility
- Freedom from the constraints of fixed tabulations.
- User driven information content (no more commissioned tables).
- More output formats.
- More specialised, community designed discovery and visualisation interfaces
- Centralised information management
- Easier maintenance and updating.
- Greater user engagement.
- More information on usage.
