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European countries present their census results in an innovative information system

News
Posted on 8 December 2014, 10:00
Today, on 8 December, a new information system Census Hub, presenting the results of the 2011 Population and Housing Census of the European Union Member States, is made publicly available by Eurostat.

For the first time, the data of all countries are not collected into one large database but each country holds their data in their own database and Census Hub extracts the necessary data from these databases. All data are presented as machine-readable open data in open SDMX format.

Census Hub features census results on persons, families and households and dwellings. For each country, there is the same list of indicators and all indicators have been calculated according to the same rules. This ensures the comparability of the data of all the countries. In addition to the European Union countries, Census Hub also presents the census data of the countries belonging to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

Census Hub presents the census results of the countries as multi-dimensional datasets called hypercubes. A hypercube is usually a 6–8-dimensional table, where the level of detail has been preset for all characteristics (e.g. residence, age, marital status, education, citizenship, socio-economic status).

Census Hub has 60 hypercubes for each country:
45 hypercubes on NUTS-2 level (medium-sized statistical region, ranging from 100,000 inhabitants to 10 million inhabitants. For Estonia, data are presented on country level);
10 hypercubes on NUTS-3 level (smallest region, mostly also administrative region. For Estonia, it divides counties into 5 regions: Northern Estonia (Harju county); Western Estonia (Hiiu, Lääne, Pärnu and Saare counties); Central Estonia (Järva, Lääne-Viru and Rapla counties); Northeastern Estonia (Ida-Viru county); Southern Estonia (Jõgeva, Põlva, Tartu, Valga, Viljandi and Võru counties));
5 hypercubes on municipality level.

Enter Census Hub and see the introduction to the information system HERE.

NUTS is the European Union’s common classification of territorial units for statistical purposes.

The latest census round took place in the European Union countries in 2011. Censuses are held every 10 years; the next round will take place in Europe in 2020/2021.