Focus on urban, regional and local issues

Abstract

Within the International Statistical Institute (ISI) the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) maintains and develops its flagship journal SJIAOS, the Statistical Journal of the IAOS. SJIAOS is attractive to SCORUS, the Standing Committee of Urban and Regional Statistics and Research, which is part of the IAOS. The papers in this issue of the SJIAOS focus on current trends and future prospects in urban and regional statistics. Current trends in city and regional statistics feature attributes of open, comparative, compatible, spatial, and collaborative networks as mode of working. In particular, this issue will highlight the role of open data, making the volume both timely and relevant. Many of the papers originate from presentations given at the 59 World Statistical Congress of the International Statistical Institute held in August 2013 in Hong Kong. However, the authors have further developed and up-dated their papers. The aim of this special issue of the SJIAOS is to feature research and studies on the development of statistics at the city and regional level. Areas covered by the special issue include: how statistical methodologies, frameworks and other related matters are being developed to address the evolving work on urban and regional open data; developing a framework for location-enabled statistical information; recent advances in spatial analyses based on merging geocoded urban and regional statistics; progress on comparative city statistics and indicators; and on-going developments in web-based reporting and knowledge sharing. There are eight papers altogether, five full papers and three short communications. Attention is paid to the geographical coverage of the submissions. The papers are of practical nature and show how recent developments in urban and regional statistics and research are providing powerful tools to help address many of the challenges facing such areas. As well as addressing challenges the papers also deal with how cities and regions can seize the foreseeable opportunities offered by these developments. Katja Vilkama and Marja Tammilehto-Luode (Finland) presents a case study on the use of official statistics in monitoring change in educational level on the national, regional and city levels in Finland. The paper draws on the high-quality population registers that enable compiling a wide range of regionaland neighbourhood-level time series on various socioeconomic indicators. Mika Gissler (Finland) gives examples on how to improve health statistics in the context of measuring quality of life in cities and urban regions. Martin Brady and Gemma Van Halderen (Australia) present progress achieved on a statistical spatial framework to inform regional statistics. Their paper draws upon development work at an international level that focused on integration of statistical and geospatial information and led by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Their observation is that National Statistical Offices identify that there is significant growth in the demand for geospatially enabled statistics. PatriciaMcCarney (Canada) describes the ISO37120 standard, the development of the first international standard on city indicators. The Ontology for ISO 37120 is also presented and discussed. The Global City Indicators Facility (GCIF) was established in 2008 by