Abstract

Geo-referenced statistics add an important additional variable to data: the location. This information is crucial for analysing the economic, social and territorial cohesion, needs for investment, demographic change, economic convergence and climate change. Combining geospatial data and statistics enables spatial analysis making evident phenomena that would be impossible to discover through statistical tables. Geographical Information used in combination with statistics can contribute to building a Europe fit for the digital age and better meet users’ needs for relevant high quality statistical and geospatial information from innovative sources and technologies.

The integration of Geographical Information and statistical data play an increasingly important role in policy-making, administrative planning processes, policy assessment and quantitative monitoring of the effects of policy decisions and consequently in the implementation of the European Commission’s Green Deal. It provides information with the right spatial resolution from regional to European and global level, allowing for policy interventions at the level where they are most effective. It can also effectively support the design and monitoring of environmental policies, highlighting local environmental aspects and their specific effects and so forth.

The presentation will provide updates on Eurostat’s activities towards the integration of geospatial and statistical information during the statistical production process, aiming to facilitate data-driven and evidence-based decision making, to support national, regional, and global development priorities and agendas. The talk will also present the contributions of Eurostat and the European Statistical System to the international methodological frameworks such as the Global Statistical Geospatial Framework (GSGF) and the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF). Examples will showcase supporting actions at national and European level, and the development of dedicated tools and services provided to the community (e.g. IMAGE tool, OGC services, AddressAPI). This will be seconded by analytical results showing distributions of statistical phenomena (e.g. travel time to health care location based on census 2021 results) providing evidence based data for policy support. The intervention will close with addressing the major challenges observed and calling for close and inter-disciplinary collaboration to reach the goals.