GeoSocial Data

IRISS partners AURIN and the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) at the University of Queensland are co-leading work package three (GeoSocial) in the project and they are working out how to bring social science data and geo-spatial information together.  The objective of the GeoSocial work package is to establish innovative spatially integrated approaches to social science research that can directly inform local and national efforts to improve people’s lives.

This is a foundation setting effort to establish new data infrastructure and a step towards addressing the gaps in Australia’s national infrastructure for social science research.  The outputs of the GeoSocial work package aid in demonstrating new capabilities for data linkage and integration across different data providers and with different data sources.

In recent workshops the AURIN and ISSR teams got together to dig into the details on: what social science researchers need to tackle innovative spatial approaches to their research (using integrated social data and geo-spatial information).

The AURIN team (Angela Ryan, Social Data Scientist) and Dr Michael Rigby (Data Science Support Team Manager) and ISSR team (A/Prof Wojtek Tomaszewski (Deputy Director, Research), Dr Tomasz Zajac (Research Fellow), Matthias Kubler (Research Analyst), and Dr Denise Clague (Research Officer) are working up a data integration solution design (the IRISS Transformation Service).   They have begun by looking at the HILDA Survey dataset produced by the Melbourne Institute (in partnership with the Department of Social Services) to help drive that solution design process.  

Building new (integrated) data assets, and new data integration services to enable that, requires specialists in social and geospatial domains and data science apply their expertise jointly in creating new technical methodologies. Team work, innovation and social science research requirements are driving the new integration capability design process.  

The IRISS Transformation Service design will connect the AURIN platform and ADA Dataverse as combined services, and is aimed at addressing the fragmentation within the Australian data research infrastructure landscape.

Understanding People, in Places, at a point or over Time are data dimensions that sit at the heart of social science research.  

The IRISS project is one of several projects in a set of strategic national research infrastructure investments being coordinated by the Australia Research Data Commons (the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Data Commons and Indigenous Research Capability Program).

Image credit: Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony Ted Eyton cc-by-sa 2.0