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Breaking the boundaries: Integrating 200 years of the Census using GIS.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>03/2005
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A Statistics in Society
Issue number2
Volume168
Number of pages19
Pages (from-to)419-437
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

The census and similar sources of data have been published for two centuries so the information that they contain should provide an unparalleled insight into the changing population of Britain over this time period. To date, however, the seemingly trivial problem of changes in boundaries has seriously hampered the use of these sources as they make it impossible to create long run time series of spatially detailed data. The paper reviews methodologies that attempt to resolve this problem by using geographical information systems and areal inter-polation to allow the reallocation of data from one set of administrative units onto another. This makes it possible to examine change over time for a standard geography and thus it becomes possible to unlock the spatial detail and the temporal depth that are held in the census and in related sources.