Various actions during the course of 2012 (a paper to the European Statistical System Committee, a workshop with national statistical institutes and mapping agencies, and a meeting in Prague of Director-Generals of national statistical institutes) resulted in Eurostat deciding to provide a series of grants to statistical authorities to facilitate work on the coordination of statistics and geospatial information. The association of statistics and geography has the potential to generate information far beyond the simple representation of data on a map. Linking numerical and geo-referenced statistics in spatial analysis may help reveal relationships and phenomena which are difficult to discover by more traditional analyses of statistical databases.
The publication Merging statistics and geospatial information — experiences and observations from national statistical authorities, 2012‑2015 projects presents details of projects enacted with grants provided during the first four years of this initiative, showcasing the broad range of applications that may be developed using geospatial information.
The publication is available in digital (PDF, on-line divided by single articles) and printed format.