Home > Request for volunteers to try DIaD geolinking service
Request for volunteers to try DIaD geolinking service
Do you use aggregate statistics or geographical datasets as part of your research or teaching?
In the past have you downloaded aggregate statistics or geographical datasets from services such as Casweb or
UKBORDERS?
Are you interested in the visualisation of area based statistics or alternative methods for the distribution of
census datasets?
If so EDINA would value your input to the DIaD project. DIaD (Data Integration and Dissemination) is an ESRC
project led by EDINA. At it’s heart DIaD provides a Geolinking service built around open standards. A Geolinking
service takes the attributes found in a set of geolinked data such as a dataset of aggregate area- based census
statistics and merges them with a related set of vector geospatial data such as digital boundaries. The merging of
these datasets is based on the use of a linkage field such as an area id that is common to both datasets. Once
merged the data is available as a Shapefile. In addition DIaD includes functionality which allows that same data to
be visualised as a Cartogram and distributed within a private peer to peer network. More information on DIaD is
available from
here.
As part of the DIaD project EDINA are keen to here from volunteers who would be interested in gaining trial access
to the DIaD demonstrator and who would be able to provide us with specific feedback about the demonstrator service
itself and the wider utility of Geolinking in their own research and teaching.
If you would be interested in gaining access to the DIaD demonstrator and providing feedback please contact EDINA
on edina@ed.ac.uk with the subject line "diad demonstrator" and provide details of your name, institution and your
experience of using aggregate statistics or geographical datasets. You will then receive notification from EDINA
with details of how to access the demonstrator DIaD facility although numbers may be limited if operational reasons
require it.
EDINA hope that you will be interested in trying out this demonstrator facility and would welcome any comments
that you have on this.
James Crone,
EDINA GeoServices Support