Author: Oliver O'Brien

Lives on the Line v2: Estimated Life Expectancy by Small Areas

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I’ve produced an updated version of a graphic that my colleague Dr James Cheshire created a few years ago, showing how the estimated life expectancy at birth various throughout the capital, using a geographical tube map to illustrate the sometimes short-distance changes. You can see an interactive version on my tube data visualisation platform. Click … Continue reading Lives on the Line v2: Estimated Life Expectancy by Small Areas →

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Data Graphics, london

Smart Mobility Meeting in Mexico City

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Below is a presentation that combined my talks last Thursday and Friday at the Smart Mobility forums in central Mexico City, organised by ITDP Mexico and funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Prosperity Fund (respresented by the British Embassy in Mexico). The Thursday presentation focused on the third-party app ecosystem that exists around bikesharing … Continue reading Smart Mobility Meeting in Mexico City →

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Conferences, london

Taxonomy of Web Mapping Frameworks

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Here’s an attempt to create a simple taxonomy of the currently active and popular web mapping frameworks available. This covers web mapping that delivers a consumer-navigable geographic “slippy” map of raster and/or vector tiles containing bespoke geographic data. Ecosystems Hosted Wrappers Managed Wrappers Managed APIs Open Frameworks Spatial Servers Server Programming MapBox Studio Carto Builder … Continue reading Taxonomy of Web Mapping Frameworks →

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Uncategorized

Big Data Here: The Code

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So Big Data Here, a little pop-up exhibition of hyperlocal data, has just closed, having run continuously from Tuesday evening to this morning, as part of Big Data Week. We had many people peering through the windows of the characterful North Lodge building beside UCL’s main entrance on Gower Street, particularly during the evening rush … Continue reading Big Data Here: The Code →

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cdrc, london, Technical

Big Data Here

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The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) at UCL is organising a short pop-up exhibition on hyperlocal data: Big Data Here. The exhibition is taking place in North Lodge, the small building right beside UCL’s main entrance. The exhibition materials are supplied by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). Inside, a big projection shows local … Continue reading Big Data Here →

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Data Graphics, london

Busiest Tube Station Times

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Here are the busiest tube station quarter-hour periods, based on the Transport for London 2015 RODS data (modelled, based on typical autumn weekday), used in TubeHeartbeat, adding together entries, exits and interchange stats and excluding Kensington Olympia. The main pattern shows that stations further out from London’s main work areas (The West End, the City … Continue reading Busiest Tube Station Times →

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london

Mapping at the Edge – the BCS/SoC Conference 2016

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The British Cartography Society and Society of Cartographers* once again combined their two annual conferences together, for a two-day meet in Cheltenham in early September. After last year’s win for the DataShine website, I was there in a more passive capability, although my colleague Dr Cheshire, who collected a trio of prizes last year, presented … Continue reading Mapping at the Edge – the BCS/SoC Conference 2016 →

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Conferences

Population Density and Urban/Rural Split of the UK

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A new map on CDRC Maps showing perhaps one of the simplest demographic metrics – residential population density – how many people live in each hectare across the UK. The data is available at the smallest statistical area available (output areas in GB and small areas in NI) and I have combined this with the … Continue reading Population Density and Urban/Rural Split of the UK →

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cdrc

SIMD 2016: The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation

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Like its English counterpart IMD, SIMD is released every few years by the Scottish government, as a dataset which scores and ranks every small statistical area in Scotland according to a number of measures. These are then combined to form an overall rank and measure of deprivation for the area. This can then be mapped … Continue reading SIMD 2016: The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation →

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Data Graphics

Behind the Code in TubeHeartbeat

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As a follow-up to my intro post about TubeHeartbeat, here’s some notes on the API usage that allowed me to get the digital cartography right, and build out the interactive visualisation I wanted to. The key technology behind the visualisation is the HERE JavaScript API. This not only displays the background HERE map tiles and … Continue reading Behind the Code in TubeHeartbeat →

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Technical

Putting Cartography Back on the Map – Google Maps Getting Prettier

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There was a time when Google Maps was an ugly ducking. It started life as a road map, and its grey background was decryed at a memorable keynote at the British Cartographic Society annual conference 8 years, contrasting with the classic Ordnance Survey Landranger maps where the spaces between roads were normally full of “something” … Continue reading Putting Cartography Back on the Map – Google Maps Getting Prettier →

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Data Graphics

Population Change in Great Britain 2011-14

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The ONS publish small-area population estimates annually, for England and Wales, and the NRS similarly do for Scotland. By taking two of these datasets, we can see how the population of Great Britain is changing – births, deaths, internal and international migration and military deployments/homecomings all act to fluctuate the population. I’ve taken the 2011 … Continue reading Population Change in Great Britain 2011-14 →

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cdrc

FOSS4GUK Conference

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I was at FOSS4G UK 2016 which took place at the new Ordnance Survey buildings in Southampton, a few weeks ago. FOSS4G is short for “Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial”, and the conference focuses on some of the key free GIS software such as QGIS and PostGIS. This was a UK-focused event, following … Continue reading FOSS4GUK Conference →

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Conferences, FOSS4G, FOSS4G UK, pgRouting, PostGIS, QGIS

Testing Map-Based UIs for Self-Driving Cars: HERE’s Knight Rider

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I was kindly invited, earlier this week, to take part in “insideHERE” in Berlin, a small event run at the HERE HQ in Berlin. HERE, being born out of the ashes of Navteq and Nokia Maps, is now owned by a consortium of German car companies. For the special event, HERE’s developers and engineers opened … Continue reading Testing Map-Based UIs for Self-Driving Cars: HERE’s Knight Rider →

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Reviews

Mapping Data: Beyond the Choropleth

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I recently gave a presentation as part of an NCRM Administrative Data Research Centre England course: Introduction to Data Visualisation. The presentation focused on adapting choropleths to create better “real life” maps of socioeconomic data, showing the examples of CDRC Maps and named. I also presented some work from Neal Hudson, Duncan Smith and Ben … Continue reading Mapping Data: Beyond the Choropleth →

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Conferences

A Map of Country of Birth Across the UK

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Above: Areas of east and south-east London with more than 8% of inhabitants being originally from (from top to bottom) India (in East Ham), Lithuania (in Beckton) and Nigeria & Nepal (in Abbey Wood). Ever wondered why some branches of Tesco, the ubiquitous supermarket, have an American food section, while others have a Polish food … Continue reading A Map of Country of Birth Across the UK →

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geodemographics

Working Nation

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Top Industry maps the most popular employment for each of the ~220000 statistical small areas* within the UK. I’ve reused the “top result” technique that has produced interesting maps for travel to work, to look at the Industry of Employment tables produced by the national statistics agencies, from the 2011 Census. The tables I’ve used … Continue reading Working Nation →

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cdrc, census, employment, industry, occupation

named

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named is a little website that I have recently co-written as part of an ongoing ESRC-funded project on UK surnames that is being conducted here at UCL Department of Geography. I put together the website and adapted for the UK some code on generating heatmaps showing regions of unusual popularity of a surname, that was … Continue reading named →

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Uncategorized

ICA/Esri Cartographic Summit

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I attended the Cartographic Summit which took place at the Esri campus in Redlands, California, earlier this week. Some notes from the week, which was co-organised by Esri and the ICA (International Cartographic Association). Here are some notes about the event. The attendee list included some key names in modern cartography, including Cynthia Brewer, creator … Continue reading ICA/Esri Cartographic Summit →

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Conferences

The Age of Buildings

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We don’t have open individual building age data in the UK, unlike in some other countries (the data has been used to great effect in New York City and Amsterdam) but the Valuation Office Agency, which amongst other things decides council tax bandings for residential properties in England and Wales, has published some interesting data … Continue reading The Age of Buildings →

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Ages, geodemographics, houses, ONS, property, voa

London’s Bikeshare Needs A Redistribution of Stations

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Here’s an interesting graph, which combines data on total journeys per day on London’s bicycle sharing system (currently called “Santander Cycles”) from the London Data Store, with counts of available bicycles per day to hire, from my own research database. The system launched in summer 2010 and I started tracking the numbers almost from the … Continue reading London’s Bikeshare Needs A Redistribution of Stations →

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Bike Share, london

In/Visibility and Difference – Visual Methods Workshop in Berlin

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I presented a talk on geodemographic mapping, at a visual methods workshop “In/Visibility and Difference” which took place in Berlin at Bard College (formerly the European College of Liberal Arts). The workshop was organised by the TransformIG project at Humboldt University in Berlin, which was also the venue for the keynote part of the meeting. … Continue reading In/Visibility and Difference – Visual Methods Workshop in Berlin →

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bodmas, Conferences

Changes in Deprivation in England, 2010-15

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I’ve just now published a number of maps on the CDRC Maps platform which uses the DataShine mapping style (more about DataShine) to show demographic data relating to consumer and other datasets. The maps relate to the Indices of Deprivation 2015, small-areas measure of deprivation in England, which were compiled and published at the end … Continue reading Changes in Deprivation in England, 2010-15 →

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cdrc, Data Graphics, deprivation, IMD, Poverty

DataShine Wins the BCS Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping

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DataShine Census has won the British Cartography Society’s Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping, for 2015. The glass trophy and certificate were presented to DataShine creator Oliver O’Brien at the award ceremony and gala dinner for the combined BCS/Society of Cartographers conference “Mapping Together” which took place in York, earlier this September. The prize was presented … Continue reading DataShine Wins the BCS Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping →

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bodmas

DataShine Wins the BCS Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping

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DataShine Census has won the British Cartography Society’s Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping, for 2015. The glass trophy and certificate were presented to DataShine creator Oliver O’Brien at the award ceremony and gala dinner for the combined BCS/Society of Cartographers conference “Mapping Together” which took place in York, earlier this September. The prize was presented … Continue reading DataShine Wins the BCS Avenza Award for Electronic Mapping

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General

Demographics of the Borders Railway

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The Borders Railway opened last week – a 30 mile new railway running between Edinburgh and the Scottish Borders, which was for the last fifty years the largest populated region in the UK without a railway connection. The railway largely follows the route of the Waverley Line, which used to connect Edinburgh to Carlisle via … Continue reading Demographics of the Borders Railway

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Examples

Living Somewhere Nice, Cheap and Close In – Pick Two!

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When people decide to move to London, one very simple model of desired location might be to work out how important staying somewhere nice, cheap, and well located for the centre of the city is – and the relative importance of these three factors. Unfortunately, like most places, you can’t get all three of these … Continue reading Living Somewhere Nice, Cheap and Close In – Pick Two! →

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Data Graphics, london

Extra Detail in DataShine Commute

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We’ve made three changes to the DataShine Commute websites: For DataShine Scotland Commute we have made use of a new table, WU03BSC_IZ2011_Scotland, published recently on the Scotland’s Census website, which breaks out small-area journeys by mode of transport, in the same way that the England/Wales data does. The small-area geography used, Intermediate Geography “IG”, is … Continue reading Extra Detail in DataShine Commute

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census

UKDS Census Applications Conference

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I was in Manchester a couple of weeks ago for a UKDS conference on applications of the Census 2011 datasets that have been made available, through the ONS, NOMIS, UKDS and other organisations/projects. The conference was to celebrate the outputs and projects that have happened thus far, now that the Census itself is four years … Continue reading UKDS Census Applications Conference →

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bodmas, Conferences
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