1. European Census Hub: a cooperation model for dissemination of EU statistics Paper prepared by Ioannis Xirouchakis
Presentation: Christine WIRTZ, Eurostat Head of Unit “IT for statistical production”
MSIS 2014
Dublin, 14 April 2014

2. The “European Census 2011” challenge
UN’s Economic and Social Council’s resolution 2005/13: urging countries for population and housing census between 2005 and 2014
Regulation (EC) No 763/2008 of the European Parliament: 2011 European Census
Required:
Unprecedented level of detail and volume of data
Comparable results for 32 countries
Dissemination of census results in a timely manner

3. The “European Census 2011” challenge
EU Member States and EFTA countries collect micro data:
37 statistical variables
4 main areas: persons, housing units, private households, families
Using a variety of data collection methods
From different sources
At different times
… to disseminate results (macro data):
At level of municipality (Geographical granularity ± units)
Grouped in 95 hypercubes (60 data / 35 metadata)

4. What did we need? Environment Single point to access
to disseminate massive amounts of harmonised data
which is easy to use (and reuse)
Single point to access
census results for 32 NSIs
numerical and textual metadata
Possibility to compare and cross-tabulate
Availability from 31st March 2014 until 2025
Not required: Validation or aggregation on the fly

5. What is the European Census Hub ?
The project:
Interoperability initiative with 32 countries participating
Business driven
The technical solution – Hub architecture:
Single information system to query and visualise data for 32 countries
Framework to expose in a unified format statistical data stored in multiple dissemination databases

6. Single entry point to Census 2011 - data and metadata -
Eurostat European Commission
Census Hub
NSI A
NSI B 6 6 6

7. Standardisation of the approach
NSI = Data Provider
Data Collector
SDMX
(STANDARD, EXCHANGE, METADATA, REPOSITORY)
SMD tool
DSD
DSD
WEB SERVICES
Mapping store
Mapping Assistant
DSD
Web Client
SDMX question
SDMX answer
Test Client
Census Hub
Non-SDMX local database

8. Challenges and potential for the future
Data availability depends on country node availability
Response time slower than with a central DB
32 DBs to be kept until 2025
Synchronising in a centralised database ?
Some basic data derivation could be implemented

9. As of today, the European Census Hub offers …
User interface to extract data using statistical variables as data filters
Most up-to-date results
Portal for data dissemination based on SDMX
Reusable components
Universal modules for data exchange via SDMX Web Service
… Census 2011 results for 29 countries

10. Thank you for your attention

11. Census Hub - screenshots

12. DEMO

13. DEMO