Tools

Data Vis Tools and Tutorials

• Google Fusion Tables
• RAW
• DataWrapper
• Benjamin Bach’s list of datavis tools
• Miriam Posner’s list of datavis tools
• Make Timelines with https://time.graphics/

• D3 Data Driven Documents More sophisticated and powerful set of tools for web based visualisation of data

• Read the blog on Office of National Statistics about their work developing visualisations of statistics Visual.ONS
• Check out TacticalTech’s great set of examples of visualisations for advocay and some of their tutorials
• Flowing Data a excellent blog on visualisation of data (Some free, some paid)

Spatial Data, Maps and GIS

Mapping tools enable you to show data on a map and customise the map. Some mapping systems allow you to extract data, others allow you to add to a public map

• Mapbox StudioA free-to-use service that you can import data with geolocation information and create your own map.The base map is OSM, and there are a variety of other layers you can add too.
• OpenStreetMap This is a open volunteer collected geographic information source that anyone can contrbute to and usethe data from.
• Over-Pass Turbo A free tool to extract data from OpenStreetmap, or visualise specific data in the database ** For example Recycling points mapped in Edinburgh and the code
• GoogleMaps contains lots of data, and you can create your own maps too
• Leaflet If you are putting maps on a web page and want to include your own data layer, Leaflet is a easy to use tool if you are able to edit web code.
• Digimap@EDINA As a member of the University you have access to an amazing set of geographical tools and datasets through EDINA. This is mostly linked to the UK OS Maps which are not open data. For example you can visualise various datasets from social surveys
• If you are looking wider, you can visualise all sorts of data on the Eurostat regional and city website and download the datasets too.

Geographic Information Systems are much more comprehensive tools for handling geographic data. They handle things such as ‘shapefiles”, tranform different projects on to a map, and allow mathematical analysis of spatial features - such as density, clustering etc. today there are many open source tools that compete with commerical systems (e.g. ArcGIS)

• Free GIS tools

• TacticalTech Maps for Advocacy

Exercises

• Try to extract some data from OpenStreetMap using overpass
• Use one of the datasets on Datastore (under Class/mapping) or other data you have collected or found to create a mao on Mapbox
• Try Editing OSM directly.