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Responsible for this page:
Mikael Jern
Last updated: 2009-10-28
LiU - ncva - eXp - eXplorer
eXplorer Version V3 available
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Recent advances in web-enabled graphics technologies have the potential to make a dramatic impact on developing highly interactive Geovisual Analytics applications for the Internet. An emerging and challenging application domain is geovisualization of regional (sub-national) statistics. Higher integration driven by institutional processes and economic globalisation is eroding national borders and creating competition along regional lines in the world market. Sound information at sub-national level and benchmarking of regions across borders, therefore, has increased in importance in the policy agenda of many countries.
Regional statistics is a potential treasure chest for policy-makers, researchers and citizens to gain a better understanding of a region’s structure and performance and to carry out analysis of territorial trends and disparities based on sound information comparable across countries or counties. Many approaches and tools have been developed in spatial-related knowledge discovery but generally they do not scale well with dynamic visualization of larger spatial data on the Internet. In this context, we introduce a dynamic web-enabled platform “eXplorer”, a customized tool for interactively analyzing, communicating and collaborating gained insights and based on our toolkit GAV Flash. It includes a snapshot and story mechanism that captures, re-uses and shares findings. The key feature of eXplorer is its deployment to Internet users for dynamic web. The first version of eXplorer was released in November 2008 on the OECD web-site. Several extended versions has been released that enhances the possibility to explore trends over time, provides novel functions for presenting stories about the statistics and combines metadata and maps status. The latest version of eXplorer includes tools for the communication of results on the basis of a snapshot and storytelling mechanism that captures, re-uses and shares task-related explorative findings.
Further developments during 2009 have resulted in the creation of a generic highly interactive web “eXplorer” platform Open eXplorer that is the foundation for easy customization of similar eXplorer web applications using different geographical boundaries and indicators. Given this global dimension, a “generic eXplorer” will become a powerful tool to explore different territorial dimensions (countries, regions, cities, rural areas) according to the different needs of users.
See OECD eXplorer video with 4 continents simultaneously
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Download a comprehensive "Introduction to eXplorer"
Time Animation in eXplorer
eXplorer employs a data model optimized for handling spatial-temporal and multidimensional data in a geovisual analytics context. This conceptual data model can be seen as a data cube with three dimensions: space, time and attributes. The spatial dimension is represented by regions and the indicators are various demographics measurements (GDP growth, elderly dependency rate, etc). Time is the data acquisition period. The scatter plot “bubble plot” is demonstrated to be an effective Flash-based time animation method, but integrated and linked with a choropleth map, histogram and a multivariate visualization method such as parallel coordinates, makes it even more useful. The GAV open architecture, handling of large datasets and integrated snapshot mechanism are other important extensions to this emerging animation technique. The spatial cognition for the time-linked views was evaluated by OECD, Statistics Sweden and SMHI and found to be both intuitive and innovative. The operators discovered important trends in all views.
See Eurostat eXplorer time animation demo with map and table lens
New Features in latest V3 release
eXplorer V3 now operates with full functional and evaluated versions including the following new features:
- Map layer architecture facilitating - Google map layer for better identifying geographic location - Map layer with political country borders - Pie chart layer - The user can turn on/off individual map layers and control opacity - Customized map layers can be added with Open eXplorer;
- Table Lens (smart histogram) method for exploring large tabular datasets using a “focus & context” method.
- Enhanced Parallel Axes (Profile Plot) for comparing profiles of regions (labeled regions and switch min/max on axes)
- Extended Time Graph
- Explore external indicators together with preloaded indicators
- Improved Storytelling mechanism (new story panel, hyperlinks in metatext)
Links to available eXplorer applications
SCB eXplorer explores and communicate statistical data for Swedish municipalities.
OECD countries have experienced a growing interest in regional development in recent years. The performance of regional economies and the effectiveness of regional policy help determine a nation’s growth and shape the measure of well-being across countries. For the past years the OECD has been studying regional disparities and development patterns in its member countries in order to evaluate innovative strategies and diffuse successful policies.
This work has generated new demand for sound statistical information at the sub-national level on the source of regional competitiveness. The OECD Regional database is a unique source of statistical information at sub-national level for all the OECD Countries. It contains yearly time-series for around 40 indicators on demography, economy and labour market opportunities, environment, social issues and innovation related activities for more than 1,700 regions of the OECD countries. Regions within each OECD country are classified on the basis of two territorial levels: the higher level (TL2) consists of 335 large regions while the lower level (TL3) is composed of 1,679 small regions. This classification, adopted in many countries in the design of regional policy, facilitates greater comparability of regions at the same territorial level. The OECD regional database is available on the Statistical Portal at the OECD website. http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx
OECD Factbook eXplorer with 256 preloaded time-related indicators for exploring OECD countries. The most comprehensive data source for exploring socio-economic statistics for OECD countries.
Below you find two versions: the OECD Factbook's official Web site and the new OECD Factbook V3 at our Vitagate Web site. They use the same data source.
OECD Factbook eXplorer (world map) http://stats.oecd.org/oecdfactbook/
NEW: OECD Factbook eXplorer V3
