A SWISH testimonial
Here is what a test user had to say about the EWEDB.
Steve McEachern is Deputy Director of the Australian Data Archive and senior research fellow with the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute at the Australian National University.
The Scientific Workflow and Integration Software for Health (SWISH) provides an enviable collection of research tools for the conduct of heath and social science research. The starting point for SWISH is the integrated data catalogue, which provides an ideal access point for finding and exploring spatial data available through SWISH.
Once data are discovered, the researcher then has the capacity to readily access the relevant spatial data through the SWISH Extreme Weather Events database (EWEDB). The integration of the Postgres/PostGIS database and Geoserver web service for visualisation, along with the streamlined access to the spatial data through the Rstudio server environment, enable the integration of geospatial data with other survey and administrative data sources.
This integration capability allows us to easily bring together data sources that have not previously been considered in common, due to the level of knowledge required, covering multiple disciplines and research methods. In the example presented here, we provide a simple analysis of the distribution of drought across NSW in 2006, derived from Bureau of Meteorology data, and the vote for the Liberal Party in the same electorates in 2010, drawn from the Australian Electoral Commission election results website. The correlation between the level of drought in 2006 and voting behaviour in 2010 is then shown in the concluding figure.
The integration of the system with GitHub, the DDIIndex data catalogue and the SWISH data registry system also enable the research to be fully documented, published and then available for reanalysis, further demonstrating the potential of the system for supporting reproducible research. All of the analysis presented here is available through the project GitHub repository.
While the analysis is exploratory only, the use of the SWISH system shows the ease with which multiple data sources can be brought together, and hence to be able to answer more complex research questions, and at increasingly specific levels of geography. Using this system, researchers might then consider the effects of weather patterns on social phenomena, such as the relationship between seasonal weather patterns and depression within local government areas, or extreme weather events and social media use. I look forward to using this system further in future.
Dr. Steven McEachern
Deputy Director
Australian Data Archive
Australian National University
Ph. +61 2 6125 2200
http://www.ada.edu.au
28 September 2012
