There were various problems with the process
Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2025 6:55 am
During the 1990s, I built a prototype for a different set of small areas.
In the past, census areas were basically drawn on maps turkey rcs data by hand, were then computerised and filled in with enumerated data. including ‘holes’ in the maps where data for small areas couldn’t be published as it risked breaking confidentiality for the people living there. It was a very hit and miss way of working.
I was invited to become a guest researcher at the ONS and suggested that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – very much a new idea at the time – could be used to rethink the census small areas. I coded a prototype automated design system, which let them work with a whole host of constraints to devise new population geographies and characteristics.
Despite some nervousness from the ONS about using this new system, it was finally given the go-ahead for the 2001 census. And it worked.
For the first time we produced a set of ‘census output areas’. These new output areas were designed so that were no suppressed areas in the outputs and that individuals’ confidentiality would be maintained by design.
In the past, census areas were basically drawn on maps turkey rcs data by hand, were then computerised and filled in with enumerated data. including ‘holes’ in the maps where data for small areas couldn’t be published as it risked breaking confidentiality for the people living there. It was a very hit and miss way of working.
I was invited to become a guest researcher at the ONS and suggested that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – very much a new idea at the time – could be used to rethink the census small areas. I coded a prototype automated design system, which let them work with a whole host of constraints to devise new population geographies and characteristics.
Despite some nervousness from the ONS about using this new system, it was finally given the go-ahead for the 2001 census. And it worked.
For the first time we produced a set of ‘census output areas’. These new output areas were designed so that were no suppressed areas in the outputs and that individuals’ confidentiality would be maintained by design.