Tableau Zen Master Rob Radburn is a giCentre friend and alumnus working in local government in Leicestershire. 

Rob and I would like competent coders who can manipulate data effectively and have a flare for visualization to work on three Masters Projects that we are in the process of formulating. They all involve Tableau development work, visualization design and data. 

Rob can provide limited support and guidance over the summer on these projects, which would suit full-time students looking to complete their MSc in September 2016. Jason would act as academic supervisor.

If these ideas sound interesting to you, and you think you can develop a research project out of them, then please contact Jason Dykes in the first instance - drop-in sessions are a great time but see Jason's diary for other opportunities to meet up.

1. LOACL - Local Output Area Classification for Leicestershire

OAC, uses 60 variables to classify almost 180,000 areas according to characteristics recorded in the UK census of 2011. LOAC is a version that does so specifically for London.
Leicestershire County Council are interested in creating a local classification for Leicestershire and visualizing this to show structure, trends and change within the county.

LINKS

USE CASE

  • LCC are working with a special education needs data sets and are interested in either adding these data to the local classifier to discriminate or using the local classifier to explain special needs cases.

OUTPUT

  1. An output area classification for Leicestershire
  2. Interactive visualization showung structure, trends and change
  3. Consideration of the value of / to the use case

WOULD SUIT

  • MSc Data Science with skills in classification, geographic information and visualization.

2. TablOD - OD Maps in Tableau

OD maps are useful for showing large numbers of flows concurrently. LCC would like an easy & flexible way of making OD maps in Tableau.
We'd like to explore the possibility of generating OD maps using the JavaScript API for Tableau. Seb Meier produced a JavaScript implementation of OD Maps during his internship at City last summer. We'd like to see whether we can do something similar in in Tableau. There is an opportunity to help LCC manage large amounts of origin / destination data being generated by their traffic models.

LINKS

USE CASE

  • Possible evaluation with flow data from 2011 census or traffic models being generated at LCC. 

OUTPUT

  1. A mechanism for producing OD Maps in Tableau.
  2. Insights generated through OD maps relating to predicted traffic flows and model characteristics

WOULD SUIT

  • Anybody with capabilities in software engineering / development and visualization.

3. MapBox / Tableau


The Tableau / MapBox integration offers real opportunity for spatial data visualization.
What do the kinds of customized maps that MapBox makes available enable and add to our analytical capabilities?
There is scope for creating and evaluating the kinds of maps that might be useful to LCC using this technology - examples include maps of drive times between and catchment areas of different services. Maps of LOACL (see above) may be useful. 

LINKS

USE CASE

Various departments at LCC use maps in their decision making - particularly in relation to service provision where drive-times, catchment areas and characteristics of the population are important factors.

OUTPUT

We're not sure yet - there are three possibilities - possibly more:

  1. functionality - A front end to MapBox that can be used in LCC
  2. mapping - A map or series of maps / layers that are useful to LCC and available the analysts through the MapBox / Tableau link
  3. knowledge - this project could be framed to establish the extent to which alternative maps / layers help in (an) applied context(s) 

WOULD SUIT

  • Anybody with capabilities in software engineering / development and visualization. Knowledge-based outcomes will require research skills.