Nordic Forum for Geostatistics

1
Nordic Forum for Geo-statistics

• Summary from the meeting in Helsinki, 27-28 March
  2003

2
GIS Workshops in Helsinki, March 2003

• 3 sessions
• Grid data
• GIS in Internet
• Delineation

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GIS Workshops in Helsinki, March 2003

• A. Grid data session
• Marja Tammilehto-Luode (Chair)
• Sten-Åke Hallen (Rapporteur)
• 1) Production, distribution and utilisation of
  grid-type of statistics in each country
• 2) The common Nordic grid map
• 3) Cooperation in the future what-when-who and
  how facilities, funding

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GIS Workshops in Helsinki, March 2003

• B. GIS in Internet session
• Ulla-Maarit Saarinen (Chair)
• Marianne Vik Dysterud (Rapporteur)
• 1) Tools and products of today plans for the
  future in each country
• 2) Need for cooperation
• 3) Cooperation in the future what-when-who and
  how facilities, funding

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GIS Workshops in Helsinki, March 2003

• C. Delineation session
• Sinikka Laurila (Chair)
• Marianne Eriksson (Rapporteur)
• 1) Delineation of functional or other specific
  statistical areas in each country
• 2) Need for cooperation
• 3) Cooperation in the future what-when-who and
  how facilities, funding

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Nordic Grid Data brief summary1/3

• Mainly three topics were discussed during the
  workshop and in plenum concerning future plans
• 1) The four-country grid map
• We choosed which basic version that were to be
  printed
• Statistics Finland will finalize their work with
  the map and before printing send us a copy for
  last comments hopefully during May
• The initial cost for printing shall be divided
  between Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
• Each office decides upon their need of additional
  copies at a cost of about 50 Euro per 100
  copies.

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Nordic Grid Data brief summary 2/3

• 2) A common Nordic grid database for the market
• It was decided to start a project with the goal
  to create a common grid dataset for the general
  Nordic market. Important input to our dicussions
  and for the coming project were the results of
  the enquiry that Marja had performed and the
  presentations from Denmark concerning the Conzoom
  application. A number of topics have to be
  treated by the project e.g. on secrecy rules,
  database content, technical solutions, prizing,
  marketing and common agreements.
• Erik Sommer agreed to take the responsability
  for starting a common project group. Each other
  office is expected to choose a representative and
  give the name to Erik. We all hoped that the
  project could start rather quickly and have some
  first results before the summer holidays.

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Nordic Grid Data brief summary 3/3

• 3) The future for Nordic grid cooperation in a
  broader context
• The new version of the grid map and the project
  for launching a common database to the market
  will be very important steps in our Nordic
  cooperation. Parallel to those efforts, the
  seminar recognized a need for re-starting a
  thinking about the future for Nordic grids in a
  broad context. The results of the Tandem 2
  project and coming INSPIRE-events concerning
  small area statiscs for Europe will have
  relevance for our future actions. A common Nordic
  grid database for the market
• Marja T-L accepted to take the chair and
  assemble a think-tank for the production of a
  basis for discussions at the next Nordic seminar
  on Geo-Statistics. This sub-project must wait for
  the completion of Tandem 2 meaning a start
  sometime during the autumn 2003.

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Internet Workshop short summary 1/3

• Status of Internet Map-applications for the
  different countries
• Norway
• PX-iMap. An Internet map-application made by
  Statistics Norway, and this application is
  implemented in the StatBank Norway.
• Latvia
• For the time being, they have no map-solutions on
  the Internet
• ArcIMS is obtained, but is not yet put to use
• Lithuania
• An ArcIMS-application is running on Intranet. The
  plan is to convert this to Internet. The
  application offers coropleth-maps for census-data
  on three different region levels (counties,
  municipalities and a lower level). The
  functionalities in the application are identity,
  zoom in/out, search by name of region,
  downloading of map-picture in pdf-format.
• The attributes-data are stored on a Microsoft SQL
  Server.

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Internet Workshop short summary 2/3

• Status of Internet Map-applications for the
  different countries
• Sweden
• BJ-Map a map-application made by Bo Justesson
  in Statistics Sweden. This application offers
  sophisticated functionality within a not
  intuitive user interface, and of that reason
  people decline using the application. Hence
  Statistics Sweden is searching for a simple
  map-application for their websites.
• Finland
• Since 1999 Statistics Finland has offered
  map-services for election results. Actually they
  have eight applications available for making
  thematic maps on election-results. Also night map
  applications for Population statistics service
  has been produced during last two years, that is
  altogether 16 applications. Population
  statistics tables are in PX-Map, but all of
  Internet map services are based on Internet Map
  Server from ESRI. This is an old-fashioned
  technology, so Statistics Finland want to convert
  to ArcIMS, but its a question of money.
• Statistics Finland has also tested other
  map-services available on Internet. STATFIN (data
  dissemination tool developed in the Netherlands)
  has an own map-module and this has been tested
  for StatFin based services.
• Spatial databases (ArcSDE) and DB2 spatial
  extender have being tested
• Denmark and Estland were not represented in the
  workshop

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Internet Workshop short summary 3/3

• Proposal for future co-operation
• All countries took a general interest in
  PX-iMap. It is a simple map-tool and it is based
  on PX-files which all of the countries make use
  of. Improvements and some new functionality are
  demanded for this product. Probably Statistics
  Norway will continue the development of PX-iMap.
• Spatial databases could also be of great use as
  a co-operation task. Most of the countries have
  not started thinking of this, but it seems to be
  the only effective way of storing geo-referenced
  data.

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Delineation summary 1/2

• The representatives were from Denmark, Sweden
  and Finland.
• For the first task we decided to limit our
  concept of delineation to urban areas.
• Each of the statistical offices presented the
  existing method of delineation of urban areas. To
  summarize crudely the method in Finland and
  Sweden was based on the register data (building
  coordinates and population). The Danish system
  differed by using more map data in defining the
  area and the boundaries of the localities, also
  the Danish method was yet a pilot project, not
  covering the whole country.
• The session group noticed that two hours which
  was given for the work, was too short and we
  decided to try to continue cooperation in the
  future in the following way

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Delineation summary 2/2

• In Spring 2003 we will be designed a
  questionnaire consisting the description of the
  present method and rules of delineation of urban
  areas in each country and some questions also for
  the visions or hopes for future work. Liisa
  Kanerva from Statistics Finland took the
  responsibility of this part.
• All the Nordic and Baltic statistical agencies
  are invited to take part in the cooperation. The
  representatives were from Denmark, Sweden and
  Finland.