Aug 13, 2020Member-onlyAlt text for dynamic plots in ShinyAdding informative alternative text (alt text) to images is a fundamental principle of web accessibility. Currently Shiny does not have an option to add alt text to a dynamic plot created with the renderPlot() function. This article demonstrates a method of achieving this. A Common Problem Having discovered that there was no equivalent…Accessibility7 min readAccessibility7 min read
Jan 8, 2020Member-onlyExploring tweets in RThis tutorial shows you how to use the rtweet R package to retrieve tweets from Twitter’s REST API and explore the results using functions from the tidyverse and tidytext packages. …Data Science6 min readData Science6 min read
Sep 25, 2019Cleaning up data for a climate emergency[M]ankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery — not of nature, but of itself. Rachel Carson By the middle of 2019 more than half of the UK’s local councils had declared a ‘climate emergency’. Many of these also announced carbon…Climate Change2 min readClimate Change2 min read
Mar 27, 2019Pushing the boundaries with the Open Geography Portal APIThe UK Office for National Statistics' Open Geography Portal provides a range of geospatial datasets under the Open Government Licence 3.0. Digital vector boundaries for different administrative and statistical geographies, postcode centroids and lookups are all available to freely download. …GIS5 min readGIS5 min read
Feb 11, 2019Let’s Make a Map in Vega-Lite*This is a short introduction to creating choropleth maps in Vega-Lite. We’ll show you how to load geospatial data, customise maps and join attributes. What is Vega-Lite? Vega-Lite is an open source tool that allows you to turn raw data into a range of interactive visualisations. …Vega Lite6 min readVega Lite6 min read
Jan 16, 2019Take back control … of your data visualisationsMost local government employees reach for spreadsheets when they need to create a chart. However, spreadsheet programs can reinforce bad visualisation practices by not making the process required to build a graphic explicit. …Local Government6 min readLocal Government6 min read
Nov 30, 2018Announcing Crime ScannerOpening up government data enables third parties to develop innovative new tools that can help public services and the citizens that they serve. Our Crime Scanner application uses reported crimes published by the Home Office on data.police.uk and digital vector boundaries available on the Office for National Statistics' Open Geography…Crime3 min readCrime3 min read
Nov 5, 2018Improving the discoverability of worklessness dataThe Trafford Data Lab is involved in one of the six EU-funded OpenGovIntelligence (OGI) pilot projects which aim to make better use of linked open statistical data to help improve the design and delivery of public services. …Linked Data2 min readLinked Data2 min read
Sep 21, 2018Out of reach? Introducing our distance and travel time pluginThe Trafford Data Lab have just released their Reachability plugin for LeafletJS, an open-source JavaScript library for interactive maps, which uses the openrouteservice API to create network distance buffers and travel time isochrones. A working version of the plugin is available on our Explore mapping application. The Reachability plugin enables…Travel4 min readTravel4 min read
Jul 26, 2018Querying APIs in RGovernments and other organisations often make open data available through Web service Application Programming Interfaces or APIs. The World Bank, UK Police, and Transport for London are just a few well-known examples. This article details the steps required to request data from these different Web service APIs using R. Several…API4 min readAPI4 min read
