Finding Ireland's place in space
Back in the old days - maybe a decade ago when Science Foundation Ireland was set up - if you wanted to know how to get somewhere you often had to consult an unwieldy paper map or stop and ask a local for directions.
But today, thanks to affordable Sat Nav technology, a device in your car can tell you on the fly. Or you can go online and look up a map or an actual bird's eye view of the area.
Spatial data are now at our fingertips, but they are nothing new. In Ireland we have been collecting spatially-linked information for almost 200 years in the form of census data. What's rapidly emerging now though is the field of 'geocomputation', or the capture, visualisation, analysis and modelling of data linked to points in space. These processes can extract useful information about a multitude of important topics, including health service provision, coastal flooding and trends in crime.
Leading the charge in Ireland is Prof Stewart Fotheringham, who moved to NUI Maynooth in 2004 through SFI's Research Professorship scheme.
There he established the National Centre for Geocomputation, which is now regarded as one of the top-five geocomputation centres in the world. And more recently, SFI has funded the Strategic Research Cluster in Advanced Geotechnologies, which is based at NUIM but also brings in Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology and University College Dublin.
"The burgeoning field of geocomputation is a very practical science which aims to provide decision makers in public bodies and private industry with vastly better information from which they can make important decisions," says Prof Fotheringham, who was actively involved in large GIS (geographical information system) based initiatives in the USA, Canada and the UK before moving to Maynooth.
"It is about spatial data, and that means any data that can be linked to points in space, each with an X-Y co-ordinate. The location is linked to other 'attributes', which could be figures for crimes, unemployment rates, incidence of a particular disease, pollution levels - there are infinite possibilities."
Prof Fotheringham describes how the approach works: "Spatial data have special properties statistically, so special techniques are required to handle them. They also lend themselves to display, in the form of various types of maps and 3-D images. The data can be linked with other data and relationships can more easily be seen between variables."
In practice, this means a senior Garda could use geocomputation to examine the spatial pattern of burglaries or assaults in an area and allocate officers accordingly.
A health official might note that a higher than average incidence of a particular cancer is linked with a town, or part of a town, and investigate the possible reasons why this is happening. And spatial data can also offer information about the potential impact of a rise in coastal waters, or the best site for a hospital.
A major step for data collection in Ireland is an algorithm developed at the National Geocomputation Centre to generate around 17,000 small spatial units around the country.
Next year the Central Statistics Office will use this 'small areas' approach instead of the 3,500 or so electoral divisions it was using previously, and the finer resolution should provide vastly more information-rich spatial data.
"This will give all local government and national government departments a much clearer picture of the social and economic fabric of the country," says Prof Fotheringham. "It is going to give them a clarity that is almost unheard of. So they are going to be able to make much, much better informed decisions about the location of resources and facilities."
