1. Eurostat regional yearbook 2012 and the Statistical Atlas
Åsa Önnerfors, Eurostat
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

2. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
The online version has been available in Statistics Explained since the beginning of June and the paper version is being printed now.
News release: the 11th of October.
It will be presented together with a new map application tool called the Statistical Atlas.
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

3. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
Table of content
Information society
Agriculture
Transport
Science, technology and innovation
Focus on European cities
Focus on coastal regions
Focus on territorial typologies
Economy
Population
Health
Education
Labour market
Structural business statistics
Tourism
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

4. News in the Table of content
Economy has been merged from GDP and Household accounts
Agriculture is one single chapter, presenting several agricultural indicators
Tendency to have more "umbrella chapters"
The "Focus on"-chapters use different geographical entities and are placed at the end of the publication
The chapters are sorted according to Eurostat publication themes and we intend to keep a stable chapter order in the future
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

5. The publication process
The content of the Regional yearbook has already been a part of Statistics Explained (SE) for some years, but this is the first time we use actually SE as a tool for interacting with other statistical units internally. This is also the first year the content was available online in Statistics Explained before the printed version (and PDF version) will be released. The translations into German and French (and 3 articles into all 20 EU languages) can be found in SE, but the paper version is only printed in English.
Click on link and show content in Statistics Explained; show one of the multilingual articles: for example Education and show how you can change languages like in "real" Wikipedia.
Explain that there is always a bit of a time-lag, before the translations of the new content (2012) can be inserted, the translated versions of the Education chapter is therefore from 2011, but this is clearly mentioned in the beginning of each article!
The translated version of the articles can be fun to show your colleagues and friends in your home countries! This is actually the first time for a very long time this kind of content is translated by Eurostat into all languages of the Member states (except Maltese and Irish).
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

6. Publication process over the year
November – January: Contacting units, detailed planning, TOC 15th of February: Extracting data March: Map, table, graph-production 15th of April: Deadline for draft text
May: Finalising and approval of content, inserting in SE June - August: Content released in SE, layout preparations for printed version + SE articles for translation September - October: Printing and News release
The timing is quite tight, even if it doesn't look like it here!
The online version in Statistics Explained takes around 5 months to produce (January – end of May): it includes deciding on content, extracting data, table, map, graph production, text writing and then inserting and approving the whole content in Statistics Explained.
The PDF and printed version takes around 4-5 months to produce (June – beginning of October): it includes selection of photos, proofreading, lay-out, printing and then preparations for the News release on the Eurostat website.
In November–December; distribution and follow-up of the newly released edition and planning of the next edition!
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

7. Examples from the 2012 edition
1. Economy
9. Agriculture
14. Focus on territorial typologies
I will lift out 3 chapters just to give you a glimpse of what to expect from the 2012 edition!
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

8. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
1. Economy: GDP per inhabitant in PPS, by NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 regions, 2009 (% of EU-27 average)
This is the "standard" GDP map we show every year, but here we have included (on facing pages in the printed version) 2 maps on exactly the same indicator, but the first one with NUTS 2 regions and the second one with NUTS 3 regions. It's interesting to compare how the regional differences are even more pronounced on NUTS 3.
We have discussed internally if it makes sense to publish NUTS 3 maps in a A4-publication, but personally I think it is quite interesting even if you don't really see the full details of every NUTS 3 region in more densely populated countries like for example Germany, the UK and the Benelux area.
You might also recognize that Eurostat has made some changes to the standard map template compared to last year; now all the textual information is placed outside the actual map (title on top and legend below the map). Advantages; Iceland is no longer covered by the map legend, easier to make small corrections in the text with different lay-out software (Adobe Pro, InDesign, Adobe Illustrator etc.) and we also make better use of the full A4 page in the printed publication.
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

9. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
9. Agriculture: Share of agriculture in the economy, GVA at basic prises, by NUTS 2 regions, 2009 (% of total value added)
This map gives an indication about the relative importance of agriculture in the economy of the regions. Even more detailed data for the agricultural indicators (NUTS 3 regions), would be interesting.
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

10. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
14. Focus on territorial typologies: Cluster types – Degree of urbanisation – Urban-rural typology
This chapter, written by Isabelle Collet, with the help of Lewis Dijkstra and Hugo Poelman at DG Regio, gives a very good overview on how the 2 different "statistical" typologies (Degree of urbanisation for LAU2 and Urban-rural typology for NUTS 3 regions) both are built up from a cluster typology based on grid data (grid cells of 1 km2).
This article is actually the result of discussions we had here at the WP-meeting last year, when it became obvious that we needed a good overview article which describes all the 3 typologies at the same time. The article in SE also contains a very pedagogical poster created by DG Regio on exactly this topic.
The advantage of these typologies in statistical terms is that it makes it possible to aggregate (micro) data from data collections like SILC or LFS and at least get 3 reliable numbers for each county (urban – intermediate – rural), even if the sample size is too low for publishing the individual LAU2 or NUTS 3 data. This then gives an indication if – for example – unemployment or poverty is mainly a problem in cities or in rural areas for a given Member State.
The typologies have, so far, only been calculated for the 27 Member States of the EU.
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

11. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
Statistical Atlas
The Statistical Atlas contains all the maps from the Regional yearbook 2012 and it will be launched on the Eurostat website on the day of the News release: the 11th of October.
The Statistical Atlas is based on a stable set of maps (all maps from the 2012 edition of the Regional yearbook) and a fixed data set (data extracted on the 15th of February this year), but it could in the future also be used for displaying other data, for example the LUCAS data collection (Land cover and land use).
All the maps are cached on our server to give quicker response times when zooming in and out of the map.
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

12. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
The Statistical Atlas is an interactive map viewer. By activating the information icon and choosing a region on the map, the NUTS code/label and the statistical value of the selected region will be displayed in an information box.
Each data set also have a slide bar for the transparency settings; here you can compare the administrative borders of different datasets. Also very interesting to play around with for the maps from the "territorial typologies chapter I showed you before.
The borders of the different levels of the Urban Audit cities are also included in the Base map layer; here you can see the exact borders of the "Core city", the "Greater city" and the "Larger Urban Zone" (LUZ), as well as the sub city boundaries for each Urban Audit city.
This is the first time Eurostat is publishing a tool for really examining all the geographical datasets in greater detail, which will be a very good improvement!
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

13. Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012
The Statistical Atlas also includes a number of "base maps", showing the boarders of the NUTS regions, the Urban Audit cities etc., which can be combined with the statistical maps.
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012

14. Thank you for listening. Any questions or suggestions for improvement?
Please contact
Åsa Önnerfors on
Working Party on Regional Statistics 1-2 October 2012