Conflict Urbanism: Aleppo from the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia University, a project to build online maps of the conflict damage in the historic region of Aleppo. You can use the satellite images to explore the city before and during conflict to view the damage. Case studies from collaborators will be added to analyse and […]
Social Sciences and Humanities Librarians’ Blog
Where is the riskiest place to live?
Download the latest world ranking from United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security. It considers risk from extreme natural events and ranks 117 nations. This year’s report has a special focus on food security. The background section of the website compares with other factors. For other related indexes and reports on natural […]
Global State of Freedom of Information is ‘worrying’…
…according to the annual Open Data Barometer from the World Wide Web Foundation. It says that only 50% of the 92 included countries have ‘reasonably strong’ laws. For more detailed FOI statistics for the UK see the annual report from the Cabinet Office which has breakdowns by individual department.
Paris Agreement 2016
The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It deals mainly with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020. An agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries in Paris in December 2015. It was signed on 22 April […]
Inclusive Growth Commission
RSA Launch Inclusive Growth Commission. Read the prospectus of this new Commission which will be examining ‘practical ways to make local economies across the UK more economically inclusive and prosperous, devising new models of place-based growth.’ It will report in March 2017. Key themes include how to build inclusive labour markets (preventing gender and race barriers, […]
Who gives to Higher Education institutions?
Download the latest annual Ross- Cass survey of charitable giving to universities which is carried out by the by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in Europe. It finds giving has increased by 8% since 2013-14, the highest number of gifts being given by alumni. The report also includes statistics on expenditure […]
UK Data Service Training
The UK Data Service is providing the following webinars in May and June: Key issues in reusing data, 4 May 2016, 15.00 – 16.00 The UK Census Longitudinal datasets, 6 May 2016, 14.00 – 15.00 Data management basics, 12 May 2016, 15.00 – 16.00 Webinar: What are APIs?, 26 May 2016, 15.00 – 16.00 Webinar: What is MongoDB?, […]
Diversity in HE. Or not…
Lies, damned lies and statistics on widening access to Russell Group universities Interesting article in the latest issue of Radical Statistic by Vikki Boliver which criticises the Russell Group Opening Doors report arguing that it is an illusion that the number of students from ‘diverse backgrounds’ has increased. Arguments are made on the basis of […]
2015 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
Just Published by U.S. State Department this annual report which gives a world overview of trends and individual country reports. Sections include civil liberties, worker’s rights and discrimination. Interesting to compare with Freedom House annual Freedom in the World Ranking. Hurisearch – the human rights search engine is good for locating recent documents. It indexes […]
World Development Indicators (WDI) 2016
Just released by the World Bank this major dataset which has over 800 indicators covering more than 150 economies. It has extensive data tables and a sustainable development goals dashboard . New this year – the world bank is phasing out the usage of the terms ‘developing countries’ and ‘developed world’ and moving towards more […]
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