Section Two: Importing Data

Part One: Downloading Data

The first thing to do is to obtain some data in a format suitable to use in MapInfo, or which are suitable to be converted into these formats.
MapInfo may import files in the following formats:

.tab - MapInfo tables.
.mif and .mid - MapInfo interchange files. .mif files hold co-ordinate data, while .mid files hold attribute data.
Database files - Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Lotus, dBASE.
Graphics - .gif, .jpg, .bmp, .tif etc.

Nomisweb

Nomis is run by the University of Durham of behalf of the Office for National Statistics(ONS). It provides Labour Force Survey data for variables such as employment and claimant counts.
Accounts are free and available to everyone, is as the case for all ONS data.

Use a web browser to navigate to http://www.nomisweb.co.uk. It is not necessary to register with Nomisweb in order to access their data. However, if you do not have an account and would like one, choose the 'register with us' link in the box at the top left, and follow the necessary steps. Your username will be a combination of numbers and letters assigned to you by Nomisweb, and the site allows you to select your own password. These will be sent to you in an email confirming your registration, from which you must follow a link to activate your account.
The easiest way to select data from Nomisweb is using the Wizard. Click on the Wizard Query link in the Detailed Statistics box in the centre of the screen. This will ask you to log in, either using your username and password, or as a guest.
Data may be selected from popular datasets, by theme, or by geography, by following the links. We will use the example of claimant count for the most recent month for the Bradford district.
Select the link 'claimant count with rates and proportions' from popular datasets. Click next to begin selecting data.
By default, the most recent data are selected. However, data for any range of dates may be selected at this stage. Click next.
The next stage is to select the geography from a list of choices. We will use 1991 frozen wards for this example, although the 2003 ward boundaries have recently become available for data from February 2004 onwards. Select this link. Choose Bradford from the drop down menu. This will give you a list of wards in the Bradford district. Click Select All, then click Next.
Select the rates or proportions of the population you wish to download, and click next.
Select whether you wish to download data for males, females or the total population, and click next.
The next window shows a summary of the selection you have made. If you are not happy with it, now is the time to go back and change it. Click next.
The final stage of the wizard allows you to select the format in which you wish to download your data. Select comma separated values from the drop down menu. This is crucial to the data easily being imported into MapInfo. Click Download data. Save the comma separated values (.csv) file.
Use Microsoft Excel to open the .csv file, and save it as an Excel file, .xls. Deleting the .csv file will not affect the .xls file. This file may then be imported into MapInfo (Section Two, Part Two), and appended to a table which has boundary data for the same geography (Section Two, Part Three).

Casweb

Casweb is a source of data for 1981, 1991 and 2001 censuses. Data are available at output levels right down to Enumeration District (ED) for 1991 data or Output Area (OA) for 2001 data. Data are stored by table, and these tables are searchable for keywords.
To access Casweb you will need an Athens username and password. These are available to members of the academic community, including reserach councils, free of charge, by contacting the Athens administrator for your institution, a list of which may be found at http://www.athensams.net/dsp/sitelist.html. Institutions which are funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) or National Health Service (NHS) may also apply for access to Athens services, although there is a charge for this, details of which are available by emailing [email protected]. The Athens website provides further information. As the Athens username and password give access to a wide variety of information from the internet, it is well worth getting one.

Use a web browser to navigate to http://www.census.ac.uk/casweb. Log in using your Athens username and password.
Select the type of data you wish to download, for example, 2001 Census for Great Britain or 1991 Great Britain SAS (Small Area Statistics) and LBS (Local Base Statistics). For this example we will download ward level data on the population of Bradford by ethnic group for 1991. This example dataset will be used throughout the tutorial.

1991 Casweb Data

Select the blue link to the 1991 Great Britain SAS and LBS (with digital boundary data).
The data download process for Casweb in the three user friendly steps. You can tell which step you are in from the tab on the left of the window.

Step One: Define Study Area Study areas may be selected from a List View or a Map View. When you know the name of the area you wish to download data for, the List View is quicker, so this is what we will use.
Select England, and click the Select Counties/Regions button. Select 08 West Yorkshire and click the Select Districts button. If you wish to clear your selections at any point, press the Reset button.
Select 08CX Bradford. There is an option to select data for Wards/Postcode sectors, and then for EDs/OAs (Enumeration Districts/Output Areas). However, as we wish to download data for the entire Bradford district, we now move on to Select Output Level.
The output level allows the user to choose whether they wish to download data at every scale down from the one they have selected. In this case, we can download data for the whole district, by ward, or by ED. If we had chosen Select Output Level after we had selected England or West Yorkshire, we would also have the choice of downloading data by county. For this exercise we will download data by ward, as district level data are too coarse a resolution and ED level data would be too fine a resolution to produce a clear map for the whole district. Consider the use of the data when selecting the output level.

Step Two: Select Data Data may be selected from census tables which are listed in the drop down list. Data may also be selected by searching for the variable required. Select table 01: Population bases. From this table we will get the total population of each ward, which we can later use to calculate the percentage of the population which each ethnic group forms.
Maximise the window if you cannot see the Select Variables button to the right of the list of tables. Leave the SAS radio button selected, and leave the default table view as Grid View. Press the Select Variables button.
Select box 1 in the top left corner of the table. This represents the total residents. We know we will get this figure for each ward when we download the data, as we have already set our output level to ward.
Click the Add Variables to Data Selection button above the table, and wait. s010001 will appear in the variable list on the right of the screen.
Important: The names assigned to the variables represent the cell within the table from which they are selected, and as such are combinations of letters and numbers which are meaningless to the user. Select the variable s010001 so that it is highlighed in blue if it is not already, and click the rename button in the variable list frame. Give your variable a meaningful name, so that you know what it represents when you come to look at it later, for example, totalpop. The more variables you have, the more important it becomes to do this.
Data from several tables may be selected and downloaded as one file. Use the blue link above the table, which allows you to click here to select another table. This will take you back to the list of tables.
Select table 06: Ethnic Group, and press the Select Variables button.
Choosing the checkbox in the leftmost, grey, column will select the entire row. Similarly, selecting the checkbox in the top, grey, row will select the entire column. There is a Select All button for selecting the entire table. Clicking a checkbox again once it is selected will deselect it, but there is a Clear All button at the top for undoing larger mistakes and starting again with that table from scratch.
Select the top row of the table, total persons. Click in the checkbox for persons born in Ireland to deselect it. Click the Add Variables to Data Selection button.
Rename the variables in the variable list, making sure they have self explanatory titles.
Choose the Select All button in the variable list frame, then the Get Data button.

Wait while the Casweb Data Engine runs. You will then be taken to Step Three: Output Data.
By default, Casweb will produce a preview of the top left hand corner of your data table. Close this if you are happy with it. If not, return to steps one or two to correct the geography or variable selection.
Enter a filename in the box to the right of the Save Data button. Choose a self explanatory filename such as ethnicward. In windows explorer, create a directory in which to save the file. This should also have a self explanatory name, such as Bradford91, especially if you will be downloading or otherwise obtaining data for other districts or years, in which case it is very helpful to have a hierarchical directory structure matching the geography.
Return to the output data page. Select the Mappable button, as the default is plain text. Ensure the type is set to MapInfo, and set the generalisation to none. Set the download file format (file compression) to zip. Check over these options.
Click the Save Data button. Wait while the Casweb Data Engine runs. Press the button (filename.zip) to download the file.
Choose Save, and then save the file to the appropriate directory.
Using Windows Explorer or My Computer, naviagte to the directory where you have saved your zip file. Right click on it, and choose Extract to...
You may then have to agree to the licence agreement of Winzip. Do so, and choose the directory into which you wish to extract your file. Ideally this should be the same directory, or a subdirectory of this. Click Extract. You will have two files - filename.mid, and filename.mif, which are ready to be used in MapInfo.

2001 Casweb data

The 2001 data do not, as yet, have boundary data attached. However, these may still be used in MapInfo, as they may be appended to tables of 1991 data, using the 1991 census area boundaries as approximations for those of 2001. This process is discussed in Section Two, Part Three.
2001 data may be downloaded from Casweb by following a very similar process to 1991 data. We will download the population of Bradford by ethnic group at ward level for 2001 now, as we will use this in Section Two, Part Three.
After logging in, choose the link to 2001 Key Statistics and Standard Tables Datasets for England and Wales.
Select the country, England, and click Start.
Step One: Define Study Area Choose Yorkshire and the Humber, then click Select Counties. Choose West Yorkshire, then click Select Districts. Choose Bradford, the click Select Output Level. For this example we will use CAS ward. Click Select Data.
Step Two: Select Data At CAS ward level only Key Statistics may be selected, and not Standard Tables. Select the appropriate data by the same process as for the 1991 data.
If you choose ST ward instead of CAS ward, you will be able to select data from the standard tables. These tables represent cross tabulted variables, such as "Sex and Age by Economic Activity." While these tables are highly useful for some types of work, the file sizes involved are very large.
Step Three: Output Data The process is the same as for the 1991 data. However, there is no option to save the data as a MapInfo file. Instead, save your data as a comma separated values file (.csv). Open the file in Excel, and save it as an Excel file (.xls). Deleting the .csv file will not affect the .xls file. This file may then be imported into MapInfo (Section Two, Part Two), and appended to a table which has boundary data for the same geography (Section Two, Part Three).
The 2001 data have a Visualisation option. However, this lacks the flexibility of downloading the data into a program such as MapInfo and performing analysis. It is also particularly slow on internet connections which are not Broadband.
Beneath the button for downloading the data appears the following:

Acknowledgement and citation of census output

Census output remains Crown Copyright. The following acknowledgements of copyright and source should be displayed wherever census output is published:

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Census output is Crown copyright and is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland
Source: 2001 Census; Dataset
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Where Dataset could be either 'Key Statistics', 'Census Area Statistics' or 'Standard Tables'.

For further information on acknowledgement, and information on citation of census outputs please visit the citation pages of the Census Registration Service website.

Copy and paste the citation into a text file as you will need it to add to any output you produce from this data. This is discussed further in Section Three, Part Three.

UK Borders

UK Borders "provides digitised boundary datasets of the UK, available in many GIS formats" (http://edina.ac.uk/ukborders/description). As with Casweb, you will need an Athens username and password.
Data from UK Borders are very useful for attaching to datasets which are not georeferenced. This is discussed in Section Two, Part Three.

Use a web browser to navigate to http://edina.ac.uk/ukborders.
Login using your Athens username and password, using the grey login button at the top. If you would like a national datset, such as English wards 1991, choose the Easy Download link.
Select the English wards 1991 link. Choose MapInfo Mif/Mid from the table, and select the zip file.
File sizes for national datasets are extremely large. Do not download such a datset unless you are certain you need it.
If you do not want a national dataset, choose the Original UK Borders link instead of the Easy Download link. It is a less simple process, but allows you to download only the data you need. We will download some 1991 ward boundary data for Bradford.
Choose the Limit Country button, and select England. Choose the Limit Geography button, and select census. You may also make a selection from the Limit Date button, but unless you want historical data it is usually not worth it.
Choose the Select Button next to Available Boundary Types. Your previous limitations mean you will get a far shorter list of options than you would otherwise have done.
Select Census Wards, and choose the Find Areas With Boundary Data button.
Select West Yorkshire from the drop down list, and choose Search for Boundary Data. Some boundary types will let you select at dsitrict rather than county level.
Select the 1991 data from the drop down list, and click the Choose Extraction Method button.
Make sure the precision is set to single, and the generalisation to none. Choose MapInfo MIF/MID for the export format. Make sure the file output is set to separate and the archiving method to none. Click the Confirm Boundary Data Extraction button.
Click the Extract Boundary Data button, and wait. Click on the link for each of the files you are to download, and save the files into a directory of your choice.
Files which make up the same coverage must be saved in the same directory, e.g. filename.mid, filename.mif and filename.lst. These files are then ready to be imported into MapInfo in Section Two, Part Two.
UK Borders have the 2001 boundary data, but as yet the licence agreement has not been finalised. These data will be available soon.

On to Section Two, Part Two: Opening and Importing Tables

Section Two
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