Data after Dark

Via Professor James Cheshire on LinkedIn.

Today we've published DATA AFTER DARK: a huge piece of work that shines a much needed light on the geography and lived experiences of London's 1.3 million night workers. 

Check it out!

https://dataafterdark.org/

There's too many findings for one post, so for now I want to thank all the night workers who responded to our surveys and who spoke to our researchers and to thank the wider team and supporters of this milestone project.

The research looks like being really useful, and perhaps the night needs to have a greater presence in the geographies that we teach - particularly at this time of year when many of us who are teaching leave home in the dark and arrive home in the dark.

The site includes a very nicely presented research report on night-time working and the night-time economy, as well as centring the voices of night-time workers.

Download the research report here (PDF download)

From the website:

Although night workers make up a little over a quarter of London’s total workers, they are noticeably under-represented in traditional sources of data. Data gathering efforts, and the policy insights that flow from them, still presume the regular “9 to 5” working day, but this is increasingly unrepresentative of people's lived experiences and is not fit for purpose for the millions who work when many of us are enjoying a night out or sleeping.

Data After Dark represents the most comprehensive studies of London’s night workers completed to date, spanning three detailed pieces of work:

• Voices of Night Workers: in-depth, documented, night worker-led discussions
• Didobi Night Worker Report: an extensive survey of workers and their employers
• Mapping Night Work: the innovative spatial analysis of large datasets

Data After Dark was initiated by the UCL Social Data Institute with collaborators from the UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, the Geographic Data Service and Didobi Limited.

The research was supported by the Mayor of London. It received support, advice and funding from UCL Innovation & Enterprise.

Notable memorials in Central London

A map of notable memorials.

Visualisation of population by age in London

Thanks to Bob Lang for the link to this visualisation...

 

All aboard the Windrush Line

A lot of coverage of this story this week, not all of it positive. 

Londoners have become very familiar with the names of the underground lines, including the new Elizabeth Line (originally Cross Rail) and the Jubilee line (with their Royal choice of names). Now Sadiq Khan has outlined new names for the overground lines to aid discussions about particular routes - Londoners and visitors will quickly adapt to their new names, but there have been some predictable moans about the nature of the names... from the usual suspects.

In Year 7, we study the story of the Windrush generation, through the use of the book 'Windrush Child' from the late Benjamin Zephaniah.

This BBC News page explains what the names of each of the lines means.

Image source: Transport for London

The Windrush Line will run through several areas associated with the Windrush migrants (in London at least).

ESRI UK User Conference

 

I've registered to attend this event on the 17th of May, which will be here before I know it.

I'm looking forward to seeing Jemma Wadham speak about the work that led to the excellent Ice Rivers book, and also catch up with some education related GIS work as well.

New resources for QGIS and Census Data

In 2014, the Royal Geographical Society awarded two teachers an Innovative Geography Teaching grant of £1000 to fund the development of new resources, based on the use of Census data.
I was one of those teachers, and worked with Ben Hennig to create a new education section of the LondonMapper website: a new project involving Professor Danny Dorling, which explores London through a series of cartograms using Census data.
My Scheme of Work explores the LondonMapper website and materials, and uses the idea of future urbanists looking back at London to see how it has changed over the years.
It connects with the other unit that I wrote for the RGS called Mapping London.

The second grant was awarded to Paul Turner, who takes over as Head of Geography at Bedales School in September. He worked with Dr Adam Dennett, a lecturer from UCL who works at CASA.
Paul's website and materials can now be viewed here, and he is keen to connect with teachers who want to trial the materials. You can contact Paul via the site.
There are 10 lessons which act as an introduction to QGIS, and the mapping and analysis of Census data.

New ArcGIS background map of London

If you follow THIS LINK you'll be taken to an alternative map background for your maps which is an OS map of 1890s London.
You can zoom down to a high resolution and compare with the imagery of the city, and then build a map on top of the vintage mapping.
Thanks to Jason Sawle for the tipoff to this new opportunity for historic mapping.

OS C1890's historic map of London now available in ArcGIS Online thanks to @natlibscotmaps http://t.co/SdMpEhp6l3 pic.twitter.com/iZclbEpWuI
— Jason Sawle (@GIS4Schools) May 22, 2014

Here's the area around Mary Ward House near Euston for example...

Exploring London - Google Earth may feature...

Delighted to say that I've been awarded one of just two of these awards handed out this year, given out by the Royal Geographical Society, to work on a collaboration jointly with Dr. Benjamin Hennig from the University of Oxford on a project related to the Census of 2011.

Ben is the genius who created the Worldmapper cartograms, and creates maps at Views of the World.
He is now working at one of the finest Geography departments in the world, and it is a real privilege to get the chance to work with him.
Our project is called LondonMapper: exploring a World city through Census Data

The Census 2011 produced billions of pieces of data, and by focussing on London past, present and future we will explore ideas related to London and its place in the world, and guide students on an exploration through the Census data and present them with some decisions that need to be made, which will shape London's future...

Our work will connect with, and expand on the nascent LondonMapper project.

Look out for more new maps like this one

Some more interesting London-based news coming in the next month or so too....

Wembley way...

I showed the delegates the possibility of adding models from SketchUp into Google Earth.

The SketchUp 3D Warehouse has a range of models, and I showed the WEMBLEY model as an example of what can be added...

London in Maps

The British Library have a new free exhibition on at the moment called LONDON IN MAPS.
As part of the exhibition, you can download a free GOOGLE EARTH overlay which contains a range of London maps. It's a chunky 3.4 Mb.
I'm in London doing some GIS training on Friday, so will pop in and let you know what I think (time permitting) - or failing that I'll send you an e-postcard...
The curator even has a BLOG.

Google Earth Images

Meant to post about this a while ago, but just playing catch up.
Article in The Observer in November 2006 about how London is gaining an advantage over other cities in the UK (and exerting its primacy ?) because of the quality of images on Google Earth is much better in the capital than in other parts of the country.
London's images have up to date buildings whereas those in Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester are still without...
In Liverpool, they reckon the images used were taken around 2001, whereas the new Arsenal stadium is visible in London. The Urbis centre is missing from Manchester for example, and neither is the new Bull Ring in Birmingham.
Google Earth spokesperson Rachel Whetstone said:
"We can only update things as soon as we have the data", and they rely on third party external companies for the data.
Keep an eye out for more updates to come.
Remember that Frank Taylor's GEARTHBLOG is probably the best place to look for news of these...