Spaced Out :: 2010

Smith, M.J. (2010)
Geological Society Special Publications

The UK is served by a wide range of digital elevation models (DEMs) that have a variety of technical specifications from several different vendors. The abundance of data presents researchers with a complex range of choices dependent upon their application (and therefore ‘fitness-for-purpose’) and desired use of intellectual property rights (IPR). This paper explores current DEM datasets of the UK and presents their use within the context of claimed copyright and IPR. In particular, responsibilities placed upon grant holders for the lodgement of research outputs by UK Research Councils places new emphasis upon data access, derived data and data re-use. The complex interplay of rights between research output stakeholders (data suppliers, data creators, data users) presents a difficult scenario for both data repositories and data depositors.

Motion charts really hit the scene a few years ago when Hans Rosling presented a series of wonderfully simple and stunning talks at TED. They are worth watching just for the way in which simple but effective social indicators can be visualised and then used to explain complex societal issues. The software used to produce the visualisations is called GapMinder. In essence, it is a scatter plot that can incorporate coloured, proportional, symbols and then animate them through time. Google saw the power of this and subsequently bought the IP and have incorporated in to Google Docs as a motion gadget.

This is one (also below) I produced comparing the number of pupils on roll in Central Bedfordshire schools against their Total Revenue Income. The vacancy rate for the school can be shown using the proportional symbols and the school stage using colour. The time slider along the bottom shows 7 years of data so you can see how each school varies through time.

Setting up motion charts is relatively painless and here is an excellent tutorial (in 4 parts). Note that if you don’t format your data exactly correctly, the plot will appear to continually load…. it’s actually an error. The best thing is to look either my link above or from the tutorial and mimic the data set. The temporal element is added by dumping the next year of data below the previous year. Temporal databases remain a thorny issue and this approach, behind the scenes, will use a pivot table to separate the data and then load it in to the gadget.

Being Google, you can embed this in to web pages as Ive done below.

Great article on lidar hacking over at Lidar News. Need I say more….

Really nice map and explanation over at Strange Maps….. “what would happen if the world were rearranged so that the inhabitants of the country with the largest population would move to the country with the largest area? And the second-largest population would migrate to the second-largest country, and so on?“

Interesting article over at The Guardian on the creation of a public data corporation next year potentially to include the OS, Met Office and Land Registry. This has the potential to reorganise Trading Funds as we know them at the moment and possibly sell of parts of the businesses to the private sector. If nothing else, this government is moving at a fast pace…