Standing Committee on Regional and Urban Statistics

www.scorusnet.com

Submitted by Wendy Thomas

ISI sessions organized by SCORUS

IPM20: “Bringing Stats Home: Role of Official Statistical Offices in supporting comparability, while retaining national relevance” was organized by Dominic Leung and contained three presentations by Andrew Reamer (USA), Klaus Trutzel (Germany), and Stephen Leung (Hong Kong, SAR China) providing different models for the involvement of national level official statistical offices in the collection and dissemination of comparable data at local levels.

The presentations were compared and contrasted by the discussant Uwe Neumann (Germany).

IPM21: “Improving comparability of urban and regional data: Standards, harmonization, and sharing metadata resources” was organized by Wendy Thomas and contained three papers discussing structural metadata standards (Bryan Fitzpatrick, UK), geographic comparability (Wendy Thomas, USA), and topical comparability and harmonization of topical elements (Matthew Sobek, USA).

The two sessions were attended by 35-45 delegates. Statements and questions from the audience reinforced the growing importance of analyzing and comparing data for regions within countries, in particular metropolitan areas and surrounding regions. It was noted that it is important to understand the effects of metropolitan areas as social and economic engines for development as well as the effect of interaction within surrounding urban and rural areas. Also noted were the issues common to supra-national, national, regional and municipal governments including: coordination and cooperation between levels, access to microdata for sub-national areas, comparability of sub-national area definitions, and the availability of very small area data to support interpolation of consistent geographic areas for comparison within and between countries.

SCORUS Business Meeting
The Business Meeting was held on 24 August 2009 with twelve people attending. Discussion covered activities in preparation for a number of future conferences (to be noted separately in this column) and the activities of the Regional SCORUS Sections. It was noted that the Asian Section has been quite active in working with several organizations in China and has been co-sponsoring numerous events as well as increasing the involvement of our Asian members in non-Asian based conferences. The European Section has been less active in recent years and will receive additional attention, while new opportunities in developing a section for either North America or the Americas will be explored.

Upcoming Conferences:

World Urban Forum will take place on UN Habitat Day, 5 October 2010.

IAOS/SCORUS Conference on official statistics and the environment: approaches issues, challenges and linkages will be held in Chile, 20-22 October 2010. SCORUS will be involved in developing approximately three sessions.

Asian Regional Conferences
Beijing Forum – Sponsored by the Metropolitan Bureau of Statistics
City in China – To be held in Macau, SAR China or Hong Kong, SAR China.

ISI World Statistics Congress in Dublin, Ireland, 2011 – SCORUS is proposing two sessions and working to actively support and contribute to IAOS related sessions. Following the ISI World Statistics Congress, SCORUS will be holding a Satellite Meeting in Galway, Ireland.

SCORUS 27^th Conference on Regional and Urban Statistics and Research
The Conference will be held during 11^th–13^th August 2010 in Riga (Latvia) under the theme “Creating a knowledge base for successful cities and regions, along the statistical value chain”.

Registration:
Internet registration will soon be available on the Conference web pages run by Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia:
www.csb.gov.lv/scorus. For further information, please contact
us by e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Register by 15 July 2010.

Scientific Programme:
“Creating a knowledge base for successful cities and regions, along the statistical value chain”

Sub-themes and their coordinators:

If you want to present a paper, please submit an abstract not exceeding 300 words to the relevant coordinator, or to the Chair of the Programme Committee by e-mail at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Submission deadline: 15 May 2010

Social Programme:
2-hour Riga Old Town sightseeing tour that will be followed by dinner in local restaurant that offers national dishes cooked from natural and healthy products according to ancient Latvian recipes.

SCORUS – The International Network for regional and urban statistics
For information on joining the SCORUS list server or providing suggestions to the leadership group, please contact SCORUS Secretary, Wendy Thomas at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .