Wednesday 9 February 2011

Northern Community Research Tool: Information about some 800 Northern communities can be extracted - and mapped - for nearly 90 indicators

At the Centre for the North, we believe the national conversation about Canada's North needs to change. One such way we hope to change this conversation is through the Northern Community Research Tool.

http://www.centreforthenorth.ca/tool

This tool allows the user to study the North as never before. It will allow users to investigate similarities and differences across communities, and across 'types' of communities.

Information about some 800 Northern communities can be extracted - and mapped - for nearly 90 indicators (for one, two or three indicators at a time), classified under the following headings:

  • Demography - age, gender, Aboriginal identity and language, population
  • Economy - income, economic diversity, unemployment rate, employment by industry
  • Education - college and high school graduation, literacy rates, schools
  • Geography - latitude and longitude
  • Health - employment in health care sector, prevalence of chronic diseases, mortality rates, life expectancy, birth weight, obesity, smoking
  • Housing -value of dwelling, number of residents per home, households in need of major repair
  • Society - lone-parent families, voter turnout

The following webinars demonstrate how the tool works, as well as provide some background information.

Northern Community Research Tool - Short Webinar (run time 8:34)
This short presentation is intended to give potential users a brief overview of the tool, as well as describe its basic functions. 

Northern Community Research Tool - Long Webinar (run time 26:52)
This presentation was originally presented in December 2010 as a 'sneak peak' into the tool for Centre for the North investors (at the time, the tool was known as the Dynamic Community Typology Tool, which has since been updated to Northern Communities Research Tool).