LAD_metadata: Descriptive data on local administrative districts

In jkeirstead/decctools: Get Energy Data from the UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change

Description

A data frame providing extra information about local administrative districts (LADs) in the United Kingdom. This includes the following fields:

Format

A data frame with 406 rows and 11 columns

Details

• name: the name of the LAD

• country: the country in which the LAD is located

• new: the UK geography local administrative district long code (LAD11CD)

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• old: the UK geography local administrative district short code (LAD11CDO)

• urban_class: the urban/rural classification

• group_name: a descriptive label describing the character of each LAD (the Supergroup of ONS's area classifications)

• population: mid-year 2011 population estimates for each LAD

• area: the area of the LAD in hectares

• hdd: the heating degree days of the local climate

• cdd: the cooling degree days of the local climate

There are multiple subnational geographies available for the UK; please see http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/beginner-s-guide/index.html for an overview. This data set tries to make it easier to handle the links between two of these geographies: local administrative districts (LADs, the UK administrative geography for local authorities) and local administrative units (LAUs, the pan-European equivalent for EuroStat).

The first five data fields, and the area field, should be self-explanatory and can be used to link other data sets, most notably the energy statistics provided by get_LAD_data. However the other items require a bit of explanation.

urban_class: These classifications are described at http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/products/area-classifications/rural-urban-definition-and-la/rural-urban-local-authority–la–classification–england-/index.html and are summarized as follows:

• MU = Major Urban: districts with either 100,000 people or 50 per cent of their population in urban areas with a population of more than 750,000

• LU = Large Urban: districts with either 50,000 people or 50 per cent of their population in one of 17 urban areas with a population between 250,000 and 750,000

• OU = Other Urban: districts with fewer than 37,000 people or less than 26 per cent of their population in rural settlements and larger market towns

• SR = Significant Rural: districts with more than 37,000 people or more than 26 per cent of their population in rural settlements and larger market towns

• R50 = Rural-50: districts with at least 50 per cent but less than 80 per cent of their population in rural settlements and larger market towns

• Rural-80: districts with at least 80 per cent of their population in rural settlements and larger market towns

Unfortunately these classifications are only defined for England. For all other countries, assumptions have been made about which LAUs are urban (LU) or rural (SR) using the following data sources:

• Wales, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/beginner-s-guide/administrative/wales/unitary-authorities/index.html

• Scotland, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/06/19498/38788

• Northern Ireland, http://www.nisra.gov.uk/geography/default.asp10.htm

group_name The Office for National Statistics calculated an area classification for each local authority; based on 2001 census data; see http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/products/area-classifications/ns-area-classifications/index/index.html. This field presents the group name, which is simply a descriptive label of the character of each LAD.

hdd, cdd: These fields represent annual heating and cooling degree days for each LAD; the raw data come from http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/degreedays.php. Heating degree days are assumed to be measured against a 15.5 degrees C base temperature and cooling degree days against 13 degrees C. The Oxford data set provides point estimates for 77 locations around the UK; an inverse distance weighting interpolation was performed (with p = 0.2) to give a smooth surface of degree days across the UK and this was sampled using the LAD polygons to estimate the heating and cooling degree days in each location.

Note

Please be aware that the LAD codes change from time to time and so if you join this data with new data sets, you should manually check that the merge has been successful. Subtle variations in name also exist so beware if merging by name.

Source

Various; see URLs in detail above. Lookup codes from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/products/names–codes-and-look-ups/names-and-codes-listings/names-and-codes-for-eurostat-geography/index.html (Eurostat LAU) and http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/geography/products/names–codes-and-look-ups/names-and-codes-listings/names-and-codes-for-administrative-geography/index.html for UK LADs. Population data from http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/population-and-household-estimates-for-the-united-kingdom/.

jkeirstead/decctools documentation built on May 19, 2019, 11:41 a.m.