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- BLOG - Access to secure data during the Covid-19 pandemic - a model for the future?
- Covid-19 and Care Homes: Advances in Administrative Data Research during the pandemic
- DATA INSIGHTS -Deprivation and informal care at the end of life
- BLOG - Reflections on engaging with children & young people about data
- NEWS - Innovative new residential linkage tool launched
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.4
- DATA INSIGHTS - Youth Movements, Social Mobility and Health Inequalities
- NEWS - New report warns of deepening poverty crisis for Scottish families
- New report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland
- Spotlight on Dr Elizabeth Lemmon
- Spotlight on Jan Savinc
- BLOG - Covid-19 fines in Scotland: What we know so far
- BLOG - The value of social science and administrative data research in Scotland: how we are helping respond to COVID-19
- NEWS - Joining together with Research Data Scotland to co-host existing public panel on data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Exploring illegal drug consignments in Scotland
- DATA INSIGHTS -Linking two administrative data sets about looked after children
- NEWS - ADR UK grants 20 PhD studentship opportunities focused on quantitative research using linked administrative data
- NEWS – ADR Scotland data ambassadors launched
- Spotlight on Peter Christen
- The importance of administrative data
- Virtual Conference - Data Linkage: Information to Impact
- An Introduction to Data Science for Administrative Data Research course - March 2023
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.7
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.3
- DATA INSIGHTS - Investigating the effects of class composition and class size on pupils’ attainment in Scottish primary schools
- NEWS - New opportunity to join ADR Scotland’s Public Panel
- BLOG - Engaging the public through our public panel
- BLOG - Exploring the potential of synthetic data
- Children’s Health in Care in Scotland (CHiCS)
- DATA INSIGHTS - Automatic Coding of Occupations: Methods to create the Scottish Historic Population Database (SHPD)
- DATA INSIGHTS - Selective schools: do they improve health?
- DATA INSIGHTS - Were people who died at home less likely to attend hospital at the end of life during the Covid pandemic?
- EVENT - Active Travel: New Data, New Insights
- EVENT - Holyrood Evidence Week: Doing Data Better for Policy and Public Good
- EVENT - Unlocking criminal justice data in Scotland: Findings from Data First
- IPDLN Conference - Data linkage research: informing policy and practice
- NEWS - Making nursing data available to inform policy
- NEWS - New report on The Impact of Covid-19 on Children’s Care Journeys in Scotland: An Analysis of the Administrative Data on 'Looked After' Children
- NEWS - Updated report on Infants Born into Care in Scotland
- Scout and Guide participation boosts later life health
- BLOG - Geospatial Ambitions
- BLOG - Taking historical death records and developing a database for future analysis
- BLOG - Unlocking criminal justice data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Community mortality due to Covid-19
- DATA INSIGHTS - What makes people more likely to cycle to work?
- Future-proofing investment into administrative data research announced in Scotland
- NEWS - Understanding the dynamics of the nursing workforce: the potential of routinely collected data
- Spotlight on Joanna Soraghan
- Spotlight on Katherine Falconer
- Why misconceptions about population data can lead to bad outcomes
- ADR Scotland publishes its strategy for 2022-2026
- BLOG - Developing and re-shaping our public panel
- BLOG - Review of the recent DWP Areas of Research Interest Workshop
- BLOG: Developing a cross-national research agenda on crime and convictions
- BLOG: Working together to make a difference with data
- DATA INSIGHTS - Homelessness duration in Scotland: how long does rehousing take?
- DATA INSIGHTS - Occupation and COVID-19 deaths: Scotland in a comparative perspective
- DATA INSIGHTS -The health and economic benefits of active commuting in Scotland
- EVENT - ADR UK Conference 2023
- EVENT - RSE The secret world of data
- NEWS - New comic on children's rights and data
- NEWS - Report published on our children’s engagement pilot study
- NEWS - When did fines issued by the police for breaking Covid rules peak?
- Scotland’s portfolios: Research and Statistical Data - building a new approach to thematic data linkage
- Spotlight on Cecilia Macintyre
- Spotlight on Dr Evan Williams
- Spotlight on Fernando Pantoja
- Spotlight on Laurie Berrie
- ADR Scotland Winter Partnership Session - **internal event**
- BLOG - AGEING AND HOMELESSNESS IN SCOTLAND
- BLOG - Can we use linked administrative data to identify social disadvantage?
- BLOG - Commuting and its impact on health
- BLOG - The Dynamics of the Nursing Workforce in the UK: Using data to support our nurses
- BLOG: Growing up in kinship care
- Congratulations to Alastair McAlpine, the new Chief Statistician for Scottish Government
- DATA INSIGHTS - Analysing a season of death and excess mortality in Scotland’s past
- EVENT - ADR UK Virtual Half Day event
- EVENT - HDR UK Conference: Data for global health and society
- EVENT - Introduction to Data Science for Administrative Data Research course (IDS-ADR)
- Event - Public data for public good: towards better understanding children's lives
- NEWS - ADR Scotland's first flagship dataset
- NEWS - Data research initiative secures £90 m funding extension
- NEWS: Our role supporting the new Covid-19 research data service in Scotland
- Spotlight on Gina Anghelescu
- Spotlight on Michelle K Jamieson
- Webinar - An Introduction to Looked-After Children Dataset
- ADR Scotland Away Day (**for staff only**)
- BLOG - An Inside Job: Using Criminology, Police Data and a Lot of Nouse
- BLOG - Improving justice data to promote data justice in Scotland
- BLOG - Location of death in 2020: a changing trend from hospitals to homes
- BLOG - Reflecting on the ADR UK Conference: Insights from our new PhD Researchers
- BLOG - Seeking feedback on Research Data Scotland’s core principles via our public panel
- BLOG - What skills, training and support are required by those wishing a career as an administrative data researcher?
- BLOG No. 9 - Final blog in this 'deaths at home' series
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No. 6
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home - No.8
- BLOG SERIES - Dramatic increase in deaths at home- No.5
- BLOG: 5 things I've learnt about working with policymakers...
- BLOG: Automating Coding for Large Historical Datasets
- BLOG: COVID-19- How increased deaths at home impact the carer community
- DATA INSIGHTS -Postal deliveries of drugs in Scotland
- EVENT - 'Getting things done with data in government'
- EVENT - Linking public sector data for research: an ADR UK showcase event
- EVENT Seminar - Administrative data for social policy research: potential and pitfalls
- NEWS - ADR Scotland launches new podcast series
- NEWS - Additional funding for Understanding Children’s Lives and Outcomes
- NEWS - Engaging children and young people
- NEWS: Police use of Fixed Penalty Notices under the Covid-19 regulations in Scotland: A new data report highlights links with deprivation and inequality
- NEWS: Police use of the new Covid-19 powers: Using administrative data to analyse and evaluate practice
- Research Data Scotland - New user forum
- Spotlight on Dr Patricio Troncoso
- Spotlight on Renata Samulnik
- Summary of ADR Scotland Winter Partnership session
- Directorship of the International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN) for 2021-22.
- BLOG: In the light of experience: InterRAI and the final thousand days of life
- Multiple health conditions and social care
- NEWS - Susan McVie elected as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences
- SCADR relocates to the Bayes Centre
- EVENT: Four day introduction to using administrative data for social and health research
- BLOG: The value of administrative data: DALYs and the Scottish Burden of Disease study
- BLOG: Where to start with parliamentary and policy engagement
- EVENT - International Conference on Administrative Data Research, Cardiff
- EVENT - Using data to realise the potential of the 'Last 1000 days'
- EVENT: TalkingData: ADR Scotland mini-summit
- EVENT: “Let’s use data to save time, money and lives”: ADR Scotland partners gather for mini-summit
- EVENTS: ADR Scotland researchers present at international conference in Cardiff
BLOG - Geospatial Ambitions
Geospatial data is data about locations or place. It includes information about features or attributes of the location.
I have spent years working in geospatial across the Scottish public sector. I’m pleased that it is now an area of focus for ADR Scotland's new funding phase 2022-2026. Myself, Professor Chris Dibben (SCADR) and Mark Sawyer (EPCC) have been investigating how we can build geospatial capacity within and around the ADR Scotland Linkage Infrastructure and National Safe Haven, to add a different dimension to the cohort creation work done on routine data linkage projects.
Doing national scale analysis is an intensive process which cannot be done on a normal laptop. By building capacity within pre-existing infrastructure this will give us the ability for national scale analysis and further enrich the evidence base for research. Over the past few months we have completed a scoping exercise, exploring four main areas:
- What should we build
- How will it interact with the data linkage environment
- How do we develop/link to an analytical workbench with tools that researchers and geospatial analysts need
- What data are we going to acquire
Initial Thoughts
In terms of location, our plan is to build the geospatial platform within the Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF) - an infrastructure we already use for other activities.
Central to our plans is how we safely and securely interact with the data linkage environment from the geospatial platform, or vice versa. We need to develop a secure pathway that will allow analysis within the geospatial infrastructure to be passed back-and-forth to the linkage infrastructure. It’s a new way of trying to leverage the data that can be held in either of those infrastructures.
We are also looking at if we can use the SPACe Analytical Workbench that has already been developed and used within the Scottish Government. There is a Windows and Linux workbench available, so that would support users. In the next few months we will start to nail down the finer details.
Geospatial Data Acquisition
Our primary focus for acquisition at the moment will be on licensing as opposed to the complexities of Information Governance around personal data. Scotland has a well-established geospatial environment and there are lots of datasets available:
- Ordnance Survey data: Readers might know Ordnance Survey for the maps that keep hillwalkers safe when out walking. They have a lot of really valuable datasets including one that contains a definite set of addresses for every single addressable item within the whole of Great Britain. Titled AddressBase, this includes the funny concrete bus shelters up in the Highlands to the buildings you are sat in just now.
- Points of Interest: During Covid-19 there was a real interest in knowing the accurate locations of care homes, hospitals, schools, supermarkets, vaccination centres etc. Having a good dataset of those will be very valuable moving forward.
- National Records of Scotland (NRS) Postcode Directory: Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m slightly obsessed with postcodes. For linkage they offer a valuable set of points of polygons (areas the postcode covers) that we can attach a lot of additional information.
- Environmental Data: Looking ahead, environmental data is a real information goldmine. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have a fantastic dataset on flood zones. We can start to look at the impacts in communities of repeated flooding events and disruption caused by flood damaged public sector infrastructure, including how that impacts on people’s travelling capabilities and health.
- Scottish Statistical Geographies: Data zones, urban/rural classification and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation has lots of insightful contextual information.
- Properties/ Dwellings data: There will be lots of data available from NRS in the near future regarding the properties and houses that we live in. The Scottish Assessors also have a dataset on council tax bands and property ages.
Next steps
- We will be doing further engagement with the Urban Big Data Centre, to get an understanding on how they have approached the bigger geospatial challenges.
- We will also be linking in with the colleagues in Ordnance Survey.
This is quite a novel idea and can be a useful insight into how people engage with the environment.
This article was published on 26 May 2022