Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards – General, Geographic & Electoral Knowledge Atlas (30 Sep 2019)

September 30, 2019

CATEGORIES - Governance & Politics, Local Governance & Politics, Map Post
TAGS - General Knowledge, Geographic Knowledge, Local Council Electoral Wards, Local Councils, New Map

There are 354 Electoral Wards in Scotland’s 32 Local Councils, to which 3 or 4 local councillors are elected every 5 years (the last Scottish National Local Election was 4th May 2017). Obviously this is a political process with an unpredictable outcome, but this map is about connecting the general, geographic & electoral knowledge resources about electoral wards that remain valid no matter who is currently elected.

So building on the base framework of Local Council knowledge seed branches provided by our Scottish Local Councils General & Geographic Knowledge Atlas (19 Sep 2019), we have added a collection knowledge seed branch for all the wards in each council as a whole, with sub-branches of seed branches for each individual ward. Embedded within each of these is a high resolution thumbnail image of the official ward boundary map, as well as contextual ‘facts & figures’ such as geographic area and population – as well as some we’ve calculated ourselves using rudementary spatial analysis – in the form of data fields. Calculations for ‘Area Per Councillor’ or ‘Population Per Councillor’ – at whole council and individual ward level – make for interesting comparison, and as far as we know, are not available anywhere else in the public domain.

Also attached to all seed branches is a variety of index markers that tag them with some of the contextual knowledge and enable dynamic filtering to hide / show map content as well as aid internal navigation.

Collections of sub-branch links to general, geographic & electoral knowledge resources about each individual ward, and the all the wards in each council as a whole – with the most essential of these attached to each seed branch – complete this first national knowledge map of every Local Council Electoral Ward in Scotland. Like the Local Council atlas, it establishes a comprehensive & robust visual knowledge framework upon which we can build many other maps about the ‘national local’ building blocks of Scotland based on Local Council Electoral Ward Areas in the future.

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Part of the 'Governance & Politics' Category

Knowledge seed branches provide a ‘base level’ of contextual knowledge about the subject embedded within, or attached to, them in the form of…

Image [Embedded] – Such as thumbnail location maps, flags, icons, people profile pictures etc., which provide a unique visual element that users can instantly latch on to as they navigate their way through the map.

Text [Embedded] – Rich (ie. variably formatted) branch text – such as names & unique identifying codes (taken from official sources) – is a unique MindManager feature.

Note [Attached] – Contains supplementary information with all the elements of a word processed page – variably formatted (‘rich’) text, tables and images.

Spreadsheet Table / Chart [Embedded] – Containing contextual facts & figures, which can be toggled between table and chart view as appropriate (once again unique to MindManager).

Multiple Single Data Fields [Embedded] – Another way of adding contextual facts & figures to the map (once again unique to MindManager), these are like single cells in a spreadsheet and the values can be used to format the topic.

Index Marker Tags [Attached] – Arranged in groups and added to individual branches as appropriate, tags add contextual knowledge, enable map filtering and navigation.

Multiple Hyperlinks [Attached] – Another unique feature, multiple links to a range of official definitive / plain old useful knowledge resources about the subject of the seed branch – usually selected from the full range of general & geographic knowledge resource collections – help turn the map into a knowledge portal without adding to the visual clutter.

All the seed branches and their associated embedded / attached contextual knowledge elements used in this map are described in detail below…

Scottish Local Council Knowledge Seed Branch

Scottish Local Councils Knowledge Seed Branch
MindManager provides an unparalleled range of ‘information cartography’ functionality that enables contextual knowledge to be embedded and attached to map branches in multiple ways…

Branch Outline Shape
For geographic area seed branches the outline shape indicates the nature of it’s borders with it’s equivelant neighbours…

CIRCLE = all coastal borders (ie. ‘island(s)’)

HEXAGON = all land borders (ie. ‘land-locked’)

ROUNDED RECTANGLE = mixed coastal & Land borders

Note(s)
i) Assignment of shapes to geographic area seed branches is controlled by MindManager’s unique Smart Rule feature using the ‘SLC – Borders Types’ tag (eqivelant to thematic mapping in GIS).

Image: Council Logo & Thumbnail Location Map
MindManager allows a single image to be embedded within a branch, which may be sufficient for the requirments. However with a bit of forethought (and some software ‘jigery pokery’ 🙂 we can also create one that incorporates more than one visual element so that, like the ‘rich’ branch text, more core knowledge can be ‘packed in’ to a single branch without visually overwhelming the user.

‘Thumbnail’ Council Location Map – The thumbnail map (which has been created by us) shows the council area within Scotland.

Council Logo – Incorporating council logos into map branches makes for swifter navigation and improved user experience.

Note(s)
i) All images are optimised to reduce the file size.

ii) Due to the disparate nature of the size of the geographic areas of Scottish Local Councils, locations are not always immediately obvious for the smallest ones. If you zoom in on-screen, all will become clear though!

Text: Official Name & Unique Identifying Codes
Thanks to MindManager’s unique ability to handle ‘rich’ text – the ability to variably format individual chatracters within a single text ‘string’ – we can pack several different pieces of ‘core knowledge’ into the text of a single branch without it visually overwhelming the user.

Note(s)
i) All names and codes are meticulously sourced from official sources to ensure unambiguous identification of the council body and easy cross-referencing with other data sources, especially GIS databases (though it’s still not without it’s contradictions – see below!).

Council Name – We have taken the names of the Council from their own website, with the proviso that…

The geographic reference in the name comes first for ease of alphabetic referencing, with any of the ‘extra terms’ named below inserted after.
For names in Gaelic we have added an english language translation in square brackets afterwards e.g. Eilean Siar, Comhairle nan [Western Isles, Council of the].

Note(s)
i) The names of some councils can vary between official sources, especially if they include the following terms…

‘The’ – The definite article – should it be filed under ‘T’? In our map ‘The Highland Council’ is listed as ‘Highland Council, The’
‘And’ – Is it ‘Dumfries and Galloway’ as you would say it, or is it ‘Dumfries & Galloway’ as it is written in their logo? In our map it is always listed as ‘Dumfries and Galloway Council’
‘City’ – It’s either ‘City of ….’ or ‘… City’. For example ‘Glasgow City Council’ is usually listed under ‘G’ (as it is on our map), but we have seen it as ‘City of Glasgow’ under ‘C’. ‘The City of Edinburgh Council’ is a double dilemma, but we’ve gone for ‘Edinburgh Council, The City of’, but it’ can be listed under ‘C’ or ‘T’ in some official sources.

Council Type – SUA = Scottish Unitary Authority
This applies to all Scottish Local Councils, but it should be seen in a whole-UK context, where there are / were also other types of councils that Knowledge Mappers have also mapped…

‘County Councils (Shires)’ with subordinate ‘District Councils’
‘Metropolitan County Councils’ (now abolished) with subordinate ‘Metropolitan Borough Councils’
‘Unitary Authorities’ and ‘Metropolitan Boroughs’

ISO3166-2 code – ISO 3166-2 is part of the international standard ISO 3166 ‘Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions’. In Scotland the ‘principal subdivisions’ are Local Council Areas, so the ISO 3166-2 code is an additional, internationally recognised, unique identifier for each Local Council.

ONS Code – The UK Government Office for National Statistics and in partnership with the devolved governments maintain a series of codes to uniquely represent a wide range of geographical areas of the UK (such as Council Areas and Electoral wards), for use in tabulating census and other statistical data, known as ‘ONS codes‘ or ‘GSS (Government Statistical Service) codes’.
Although the codes are not formally hierarchical like the previous system it replaced, ONS codes for the same type of geographic area start with the same 3 characters…

S12 = Unitary Authority
S13 = Ward or Electoral Division
S14 = Westminster Parliamentary Constituency
S15 = European Electoral Region
S16 = Scottish Parliament Constituency
S17 = Scottish Parliament Electoral Region
S21 = National Park
S22 = Travel to Work Area
S23 = Police Force Area
S34 = Workplace Zone
S92 = Country

EU NUTS code – The European Union Statistics Agency (Eurostat) maintains a list of ‘Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS)‘ codes for it’s constituent member states (including Scotland as part of the United Kingdom) for statistical reporting & comparison purposes. Each member state has a parent NUTS code, and then there are 3 levels of ‘NUTS code’ for the statistical reporting areas, which in Scotland equate to…

NUTS for member state = United Kingdom = UK
NUTS 1 = Scotland = UKM
NUTS 2 = Regional groupings of Scottish Council Areas…
NUTS 3 = A ‘rag-tag’ mixture with codes covering sub-groupings of neighbouring council areas within the NUTS 2 region, single council areas for ‘large’ councils, and in the case of the ‘super large’ Highland Council area, internal geographic subdivisions along ‘historic county’ lines.

This means…

NUTS 2 ‘regions’ don’t correspond exactly to any other way of subdividing Scotland regionally e.g. Scottish Parliament Electoral Regions (even though the nomenclature may by similar).
NUTS 3 codes are not always unique to individual councils i.e. they cannot be used as unique identifiers.
NUTS 3 codes don’t always follow Local Council Area boundaries e.g. the Island of Arran is part of North Ayrshire Council Area (NUTS 3 = UKM33), but is included in the ‘Highlands and Islands’ (NUTS 3 = UKM63) area for EU statistical reporting purposes.

Embedded Data Fields: Council & Area ‘Facts & Figures’
Single data fields embedded in the seed branch are another unique MindManager feature. They provide quick reference of ‘core’ geodemographic data that provides context and enables meaningful comparison between similar areas, saving the user the time and effort of looking them up in the linked knowledge resources. These are taken from official data stats & profiles like the Scottish Government Statistics Portal or the National Records of Scotland if available, or derived from the OS BoundaryLine dataset by us using GIS software if not (thus making it more readily available in the public domain).

Note(s)
i) The Data Fields can be hidden / shown by clicking the green toggle arrow just above the top right corner.

ii) Data Fields are like single cells in spreadsheets..

The data can be numeric or text.
The values in cells can be calculated from other cells either in the same branch or in other branches. Formulas that define the values are built using MindManager’s ‘Autocalc’ feature (again unique).
The values in data fields may be used to control aspects of the visual formatting (eg. colour or shape) of the seed branch using Mindmanager’s ‘Smart Rules’ feature (again unique).

iii) Fields marked with an *asterisk above (in bold with the gear icon in the embedded fields in the branch in the map) are calculated from the values of data fields in sub-branches using MindManager’s unique ‘auto-calculation’ feature.

The data fields embeded in this seed topic are…

BASIC ELECTORAL FACTORS
These are set by statute by the Scottish Government and are used as factors in most of our calculations…

Total Elected Councillors – Electoral Wards are represented by either 3 or 4 councillors, as per the recommendations of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS).

Total Electoral Wards – The number of Electoral Wards in a Council Area is taken from the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS) website, the body officially tasked with defining electoral wards and their boundaries.
Most (27) Council Area wards conform to the Fifth Statutory Reviews of Electoral Arrangements carried out by the LGBCS, whose final recommendations for the number of councillors and the electoral ward boundaries in each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities was submitted to Scottish Ministers on 26 May 2016 and came into effect for elections held on or after 4th May 2017.
For the 5 Council Areas where the recommendations for the 5th Review were rejected by ministers – for reasons of the new Scottish Islands Act or to maintain links between localities on the ground – the number of councillors and the electoral ward boundaries of the Fourth Statutory Reviews of Electoral Arrangements remain in place. For reference these are…

Argyll and Bute Council
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
Dundee City Council
Scottish Borders Council
Shetland Islands Council

COUNCIL AREA MEASUREMENTS
It is surprisingly difficult to find easily accessible data on the area measurements for Scottish administrative units in the public domain. The Scottish Government Statistics website does have a single area measurement for all the geographic units it reports data on, but this is an ‘aggregated data zones best-fit’ figure (see below for further discussion about why we haven’t used it). There is also the issue that for coastal administrative units the legal boundary maybe extends offshore so a ‘total area measurement’ is strictly accurate but unsuitable as a factor for calculating councillor or population as a whole area density.
Thus we have used the OS BoundaryLine area measurements for all administraive units in this map (see below for further disccusion), but there is a debate to be had around the derivation, publication and use of ‘standard’ geodemographic data such as geographic area by the Scottish public sector.

Area Measurements In The Ordnance Survey BoundaryLine Dataset
The Ordnance Survey’s BoundaryLine dataset is the official source of digital geographic boundaries for all administrative areas in Great Britain for use in Geographic Information System (GIS) software. It is now part of OS’s Open Data, and so is free to download.
As can be seen in the screenshot example below of the Aberdeen City Local Council area, amongst the attibute data attached to each administrative area polygon includes a total area value in hectares (‘Hectares’ field).
However as also can be seen from the screenshot, the legal boundaries of coastal administrative units extends offshore. This seaward limit of the administrative units is known as the ‘Extent Of Realm’ (EOR). In BoundaryLine the alignment of the ‘EOR’ boundary is digitised to the Mean Low Water (springs) (MLWS).
Thus the total area value in the ‘Hectares’ field includes the area of water between the Mean High Water (the usual extend of the ‘land’) and the ‘Extent of Realm’. Fortunately BoundaryLine includes another area value, that for the area of the unit that extends beyond the land – the ‘Non_Inland_Area’ field. This is useful in 2 ways:-

if the value is ‘0’ (zero), it indicates that the unit has no coastal border i.e. it is ‘land-locked’.
by subtracting it from the total area value in the ‘Hectares’ field, we can derive a ‘total land area value’. This is not strictly accurate as the ‘land’ will still include bodies of water like lochs, however at least the calculation of the figure will be the same for all the units.

There is further information available from the OS BoundaryLine product support page.

Scottish Government Statistics Data Zones
Surprisingly there is only one official source of an area size of Scottish Council Area we could find in the public domain, which is the ‘Geography’ dataset of the Scottish Government Statistics website entry for the Council Area (also compiled as a ‘data cube spreadsheet’ table for all geographic areas).
The area figures are derived by aggregating land area values based on 2011 Data Zones on a ‘best fit’ basis i.e. they are aggregated in such a way that best approximates the shape of the boundary of the higher geography. This means that…

results for higher geographies such as Council Areas are always only estimates.
as the boundaries of Data Zones change over time, the size and shape of the ‘best fit’ will also change, thereby leading to different area figure for the higher geography even though its’ boundary hasn’t changed. For example the area figures for the 2001 Data Zones is different to the 2011 Data Zones for some Council Areas.
other geodemographic data derived using areas, such as population density, will be affected.

For further information on best-fit for geographies, see National Records of Scotland Geography Policy on Best-fit and Exact-fit.

Council Area Total (sq km) – The area value in the OS BoundaryLine ‘Hectares’ field expressed in square kilomtres.

Council Area Non-Inland (sq km) – The area value in the OS BoundaryLine ‘Non_Inland_Area’ field expressed in square kilomtres. This is the size of the area between the high and low watermarks.

Council Area Inland (sq km)* – The area value left by subtracting the OS BoundaryLine ‘Non_Inland_Area’ field from the ‘Hectares’ field expressed in square kilomtres.
This has been taken by us as a proxy for the total land area of the administrative unit, however in reality it will still include the area of any freshwater bodies like lochs, which can be quite large in some parts of Scotland.

COUNCIL POPULATION FIGURES
Population data for administrative units in Scotland are available from the following sources…

The official census count, carried out every 10 years by the Scottish Government (the last one was in 2011). All the census data can be found on the Scotland’s Census website).
Ongoing official mid-year estimates for most units are published every year on the the statistics.gov.scot website (for convenience all are collected together in a ‘Data cube’).
Other ‘Special Area’ Population Estimates are published in the Population section of the National Records of Scotland website as a downloadable spreadsheet.

Council Population (latest est) – This figure is taken from the ‘Population Key Facts’ section of the Scottish Government Statistics website entry for the Council Area, and is the most up to date ‘official estimate’ of population (also compiled as a ‘data cube spreadsheet’ table for all geographic areas).
From the explanatory notes on the Scottish Government Statistics website…
“Annual publication of mid-year population estimates by age and sex as at 30 June every year, where population for higher geographies is aggregated from the population estimates for 2011 Data Zones.”

Population Density (latest est) (per sp km)* – This has been calculated manually by us by dividing the ‘Council Population (latest est)’ by the ‘Council Area Land (sq km)’ figure we have calculated from BoundarlyLine…

Obviously the fact that ‘land area’ still includes freshwater bodies like lochs has implications when it comes to calculating population density.
Whatever the shortcomings in calculating the absolute value, of as much importance is the change in that value over time (as long as the way of calculating it remains the same).

Index Marker Tags & Goups: Various
A variety of Index Markers arranged into groups are used throughout the map to tag branches as appropriate and enable map filtering and quick navigation. Marker groups can be copied and used to do the same in any other maps.

Note(s)
i) Within MindManager tags…

provide a useful means of internal navigation between map topics (clicking on the branch that is shown as being tagged with that marker in the ‘Index Task Pane’ will immediately focus the map on that banch).
can be generated automatically from branches (the title of the parent branch is the group name and those of all the immediate sub-branches become the individual tags within the group) .
can be copied and pasted in their groups from one map to another.

NAVIGATION (‘NAV’) MARKERS
‘Navigation’ index markers tag the topics that they are named after. They provide another way of navigating the map – clicking on the tag in the index pane takes the user straight to the tagged topic.

NAV – SLCs – Each Local Council seed branch is tagged with it’s own index marker, created from the branch text itself. Thus there are 2 ‘parts’ to the marker tag – Scottish Local Council Name (Council Type and identifying Codes) eg. East Renfrewshire Council (SUA – GB-ERW – S12000011 – UKM35).

GEOGRAPHIC (‘GEO’) MARKERS
‘Geomarker’ index markers provide ‘spatial intelligence’ in a map by tagging topics as being part of a specific geographic area of various ‘types’ – administrative, electoral, statistical, topographic etc. The areas do not need to be topics in the map for them to be a ‘Geomarker’. They are the equivalent of ‘Lookup Tables’ in ‘GIS’.

GEO Borders
The nature of the council’s borders with it’s neighbours…

SLC – Borders Types – This Marker Group indicates the status of the local authority’s borders with all of it’s equivalent neighbours, in respect to the ocean (as per the topic shape). Thus these tags will enable the filtering of a map to show / hide those areas that do / do not have a coastline.
Possible tags…

All Coastline (Island)
Mixed
No Coastline (Land-locked)

SLC – Mutual Borders – This Marker Group indicates which other Scottish Local Council(s) that the selected council shares a mutual border with, as shown on the Ordnance Survey Election Map online viewer.
On mainland Scotland Council borders are contiguous i.e. there are no ‘gaps’ between them, so they have a complex interplay with shoreline, freshwater lochs, rivers, estuaries (firths), sea lochs and the ‘extent of the realm’ (the national boundary offshore). Thus in some cases councils share a mutual border on a water feature rather than land.
The ‘island councils’ – Orkney & Shetland – are far enough away from the mainland that they do not share a mutual boundary with any others.

GEO Unique Identifying Codes
Within the branch text we incorporate unique identifiers codes for geographic areas for easy cross-reference with other data sources, especially GIS databases.
We also add some of the truly unique codes as ‘geo’ index marker tags to the topic. Only one topic in the map will have that ‘geo tag’. This offers interesting possibilities for adding further content at a later date.

SLC – UK EU-NUTS2 Region – See the EU NUTS code incorporated in the topic text legend entry for further information about NUTS codes in Scotland.
There are 2 ‘parts’ to the marker – NUTS 2 area name (NUTS 2 Code) eg. South Western Scotland Region (UKM3).

SLC – ISO3166-2 code – ISO 3166-2 is part of the international standard ISO 3166 ‘Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions’.
In Scotland ‘the principal subdivisions’ are Local Council Areas, so the ISO 3166-2 code is an additional, internationally recognised, unique identifier for each Local Council.

SLC – ONS Code – The Council’s official identifying code given by the UK Government Office for National Statistic (ONS) in partnership with the Scottish Government, as per the Branch Text above.

GEO ‘Look-Up Geographies
In the world of Geographic Information (GI) a ‘look up’ defines the link between one geographic feature and another. Most commonly this is between geographic areas of different ‘types’. For example a Local Council Electoral Ward will also coincide with ‘higher’ electoral geographies of Scottish Parliament Constituencies & Regions, and United Kingdom Parliament Constituencies. Of course the boundaries of the different geographies do not necessarily coincide or ‘nest’ exactly (though they might have done at one time). Thus relationships are often ‘one to many’, or even ‘many to many’, which is ‘database speak’ for ‘it’s complicated’.
Relationships are usually derived using computerised spatial analysis, with the results stored in ‘look-up tables‘ in databases or spreadsheets. ‘Geo’-tagging map branches that represent geographic areas is our hopefully useful alternative.
You can get more of an idea of the complexities of UK Geographihies from the handy UK Office of National Statistics Beginners Guide To UK Geography.

SLC – UK Parliament Constituency – All the UK Parliament Constuencies that overlap with the local council area. There are usually at least 2.
There are 2 ‘parts’ to this marker – Constituency Name (ONS Code) eg. East Renfrewshire (S14000021).

Scottish Parliament Region – Scottish Parliamentary Consituencies are divided into regions, which also have elected members. There are 2 ‘parts’ to the marker -Scottish Parliamentary Constituency Region Name (ONS Code) eg. West Scotland (S17000018).

Scottish Parliament Constituency – All the Scottish Parliament Constuencies that overlap with the local council area. There are 2 ‘parts’ to this marker – Scottish Parliamentary Constituency Name (ONS Code) eg. Eastwood (S16000103).

SLC – Strategic Development Planning Authority – From the ‘Scottish Government Planning Circular 2/2008: statutory guidance on strategic development planning authorities‘…

“Section 2 of the 2006 Act introduced a new section 4(1) into the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 (the 1997 Act) which allowed Ministers to designate groups of planning authorities as strategic development planning authorities (SDPAs), tasked with preparing and reviewing SDPs. Scottish Ministers designated the following four such groupings in the SDPA Designation Orders 2008 which came into force on 25 June 2008…

Glasgow and the Clyde Valley (Clydeplan) – East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshiren Councils.
Aberdeen City and Shire – Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Councils.
TAYPLan – Angus, Dundee City, Fife and Perth & Kinross Councils.
SESPLan – City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Fife, Midlothian, Scottish Borders and West Lothian Councils.

Attached Hyperlinks: Multiple
See next section for full details.

Scottish Local Councils Knowledge Seed Branch
One of our philosophies at KnowledgeMappers is not to reinvent the wheel whenever possible. Thus we include hyperlinks to original official / definitive / plain old useful knowledge sources whenever possible, as well as links to Wikipedia pages for additional, “bigger picture” context (often not obvious, or even absent from, the original source). By doing this…

original sources get used more often, by more people.
errors get spotted quicker, thereby improving the information quality for everybody.
updates get promulgated sooner to end users.
rather than us having to interpret original sources to create further information resources around “big picture” context for a subject we are not experts in, users of our map can “get it straight from the horses mouth” as it were, so everybody benefits.

Note(s)
i) MindManager has the unique ability to have multiple hyperlinks attached to a single map branch, and to edit the default title text of the link to make it more meaningful to the user. This…

greatly reduces the visual clutter of the map.
means a full basket of links to official / definitive / useful knowledge resources about the subject can stay with the seed branch if it is re-used in other maps.

The chain icon at the end of a branch (rather than the favicon (icon) served by the linked-to website) indicates where a branch has more than one hyperlink.

ii) In the circular knowledge economy way of Wikipedia if there is knowledge that you could add to an existing page that is linked to, or even starting a page that doesn’t yet exist, then go for it! That’s what it’s all about!

iii) Not all of the resources below will exist for all Local Councils.

The following knowledge resource links are attached to this seed branch (arranged in alphabetical order within the groupings)…

General Information Knowledge Resource Links

Council Website: Home page – The ‘home page’ of the Local Council website. Some are more helpful than others in terms of guiding you through onwards navigation.

Council Website: A-Z page – The ‘A-Z of Services’ page(s) of the Local Council website. Obviously a good starting point to find out about specific areas of interest, however as with all alphabetic indexes, a bit of hunting may be required to find the pages of interest.

Council Website: Councillors directory page – The ‘front page’ of the ‘Councillor’ pages of the Local Council website. As with most other things, there is a variety of ways that Councils choose to organise things…

Structure e.g. all on one page or sub-pages
‘Slicing & dicing’ display options…
- Alphabetically by name
- by Ward – Note the wards may be listed numerically by LGBCS ward number rather than alphabetically (but may not even include the ward number in the listing!).
- by Political Party – Note that some don’t even include the political party affiliation on the’ all councillor’ page, only on the individual councillor page.
Inter-linking e.g. sometimes there is no link to the register of members interests, sometimes there is, sometimes it is included within the page.

Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA): Council Profile – COSLA is the umbrella body for Scottish Local Councils. As well as a profile page for each council, there are also ones listing Council Leaders, Chief Executives, Civic Heads, Political Control and Current Breakdown.

National Records of Scotland: Council Area Profile – These official statistical profiles bring together data on population, births, deaths, life expectancy, migration, marriages, civil partnerships, households and dwellings.

Scottish Government Statistics Portal: Council Area – This is the Council Area section on the geostatistical atlas section of the statistics.gov.scot website. As well as key facts, the data about the Council Area is grouped as…

Social Environment
Crime and Justice
Economic Activity, Benefits and Tax Credits
Economy
Education, Skills and Training
Environment
Geography
Health and Social Care
Housing
Labour Force
Population
Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation
Transport

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation: SIMD16 Council Area Profile – SIMD is the official tool for finding the most deprived areas in Scotland. SIMD identifies small area concentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland in a consistent way. It allows effective targeting of policies and funding where the aim is to wholly or partly tackle or take account of area concentrations of multiple deprivation.
This analysis report gives an overview of deprived and less deprived areas in the council area, and show the most deprived areas in more detail. It includes a large number of maps as well as charts.
This is one of several SIMD online resources available:-

Wikipedia: Article on the geographic area administered by the council – Wikipedia has a wealth of information about the geographic area covered by Council Areas & wards, if not the actual Council itself, and the results of all local council elections down to ward level going back a considerable period of time.
As with all Wikipedia links:-

If you know something that’s not there, get involved and add your contribution to the article so everybody can benefit from your knowledge.
The external Links’ section at the bottom of the articles provides a great ‘jumping off point’ to discover new knowledge resources.

Wikipedia: Separate article on the Council, or ‘local governance’ sub-section of article on geographic area – Wikipedia has a wealth of information about the geographic area covered by Council Areas & wards, if not the actual Council itself, and the results of all local council elections down to ward level going back a considerable period of time.

Geographic Information Knowledge Resource Links

Council Website: Map page(s) (if present) – The variety and quality of map resources published by Scottish Local Councils is very varied….

Downloadable PDF files
Online digital mapping system, where boundaries can be viewed along with other ‘layers’ of map data about the Council Area (though unfortunately such is the technical setup of these that links to views of specific things are not provided and cannot be created without a considerable amount of effort).

Gazetteer for Scotland: Index of Entries In Council Area – The Gazetteer for Scotland is a vast geographical encyclopaedia, featuring details of towns, villages, bens and glens from the Scottish Borders to the Northern Isles. The first comprehensive gazetteer produced for Scotland since 1885, it includes tourist attractions, industries and historical sites, together with histories of family names and clans, biographies of famous Scots and descriptions of historical events associated with Scotland. The network of connections between all of these entries make this gazetteer unique. We have included the text of Groome’s 19th Century Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland to provide a historical perspective on many of the places we describe.

Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland: Council Area Overview Map 2017 [PDF] – The Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS) helpfully publish GIS produced, ward boundary maps in PDF (i.e. static) format as part of their periodic review process. The maps show the boundaries against an Ordnance Survey basemap, and can be easily printed if required.
There will be

an overview map of the whole Council Area showing where all the wards are relative to each other,
Individual ward maps

National Map Library of Scotland Boundaries (1840’s, 1960’s & 2017) Map Viewer: Council Area – The map viewer shows the boundaries of parishes, counties and unitary authorities in Scotland, ca. 1840s to the present.
Zoom in and hover over any location or click on the map to view the County, Parish, or Unitary Authority covering the place you have clicked on.
Read further information on the specific boundaries shown, the history of parishes, legislation, and cartographic information sources on boundaries.

Note(s)
i) Once you have ‘entered’ any of the National Library of Scotland map viewers using these links you can toggle between them using the links at the top of the page and the map area will stay centred on the location.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation Online Map: View centred on Council Area – SIMD is the official tool for finding the most deprived areas in Scotland. SIMD identifies small area concentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland in a consistent way. It allows effective targeting of policies and funding where the aim is to wholly or partly tackle or take account of area concentrations of multiple deprivation.
This is one of several SIMD online resources available:-

Wikipedia: Lists of articles about places in the Council Area – Wikipedia has a wealth of articles about geographic places, be they settlements (villages, towns & cities), or area features like regions, states, countries, national parks etc. Sometimes the editors compile a list of all the related articles on a single page and call it ‘Listsof places in…’, so they become a ‘gazetteer‘ in geogrphic information parlance. Fortunately there is one such list for every Local Council Area in Scotland.

Note(s)
i) As with all Wikipedia links…

If you know something that’s not there, get involved and add your contribution to the article so everybody can benefit from your knowledge.
The ‘External Links’ section at the bottom of the articles is usually a great ‘jumping off point’ to discover new knowledge resources, often the source information for the article itself.

All Electoral Wards General Seed Branch

All Local Council Electoral Wards General Knowledge Seed Branch
MindManager provides an unparalleled range of ‘information cartography’ functionality that enables contextual knowledge to be embedded and attached to map branches in multiple ways…

Image: Thumbnail boundary overview map
MindManager ‘allows a single image to be embedded within a branch. However with a bit of forethought (and some ‘jigery pokery’ with image editing software 🙂 we can create one that incorporates more than one visual element so that, like the ‘rich’ branch text, more core knowledge can be ‘packed in’ to a single branch without overwhelming the user.

‘Thumbnail’ Ward Overview Map – This is a low resolution screenshot of the official ward overview map for the Council Area, available as a PDF on the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS) website, the body officially tasked with defining electoral wards and their boundaries. The maps show the boundaries against an Ordnance Survey basemap, (the PDF’s can be easily printed at A4 size if required).

Note(s)
i) The link to the actual PDF map is included in the multiple hyperlinks attached to the branch.

ii) Though the image quality has been reduced to minimise the file size, the detail should still be legible if you zoom in on it.

iii) The 4th and 5th electoral Review maps have different styles so it is easy to see to tell which boundaries apply at a glance.

Text: Title & Council Name
Thanks to MindManager’s unique ability to handle ‘rich’ text – the ability to variably format individual chatracters within a single text ‘string’ – we can pack several different pieces of ‘core knowledge’ into the text of a single branch without it visually overwhelming the user.

Title

Council name – Given the number of branches in our maps, the screen space can fill up quite quickly as users drill down the hierarchy and expand their content. Thus we usually repeat the Council name wherever expedient so users can more easily keep track of what they’re looking at.

Note: By-Election Log
Additional knowledge can be attached to the branch in the form of a note. This is basically as rich an environment as a word processor page, so ‘rich’ text, tables and images.

By election log – The incidence of by-elections in individual wards will be logged here. Not the results though, or the ‘shananigans’ of individual councillors, which will recorded in the ‘Political Knowledge Atlas’.

Note(s)
i) The Electoral Management Board for Scotland (EMB) has the official log of Local Council by-elections, but it doesn’t list the subsequent result, only links to the council website, and then it may not be to a specific page about the election, or contain the actual results. The ‘changes since last election’ subsection of the Wikipedia page on the local council election for the council is actually the best place to find out this information (though how quickly after the even the information appears is another matter!).

Embedded Data Fields: Geostatistic for all council wards as a whole
Single data fields embedded in the seed branch are another unique MindManager feature. They provide quick reference of ‘core’ geodemographic data that provides context and enables meaningful comparison between similar areas, saving the user the time and effort of looking them up in the linked knowledge resources. These are taken from official data stats & profiles like the Scottish Government Statistics Portal or the National Records of Scotland if available, or derived from the OS BoundaryLine dataset by us using GIS software if not (thus making it more readily available in the public domain).

Note(s)
i) The Data Fields can be hidden / shown by clicking the green toggle arrow just above the top right corner.

ii) Data Fields are like single cells in spreadsheets..

The data can be numeric or text.
The values in cells can be calculated from other cells either in the same branch or in other branches. Formulas that define the values are built using MindManager’s ‘Autocalc’ feature (again unique).
The values in data fields may be used to control aspects of the visual formatting (eg. colour or shape) of the seed branch using Mindmanager’s ‘Smart Rules’ feature (again unique).

iii) Fields marked with an *asterisk below (in bold with the gear icon in the embedded fields in the branch in the map) are calculated from the values of data fields in sub-branches using MindManager’s unique ‘auto-calculation’ feature.

The data fields embeded in this seed topic are…

BASIC FACTORS
These are repeated from the Council seed branch in order to be used as factors in most of our subsequent calculations…

Council Electoral Wards – As per the Local Council knowledge seed branch.

Council Elected Councillors TOTAL – As per the Local Council knowledge seed branch.

Council Area Inland (sq km) – As per the Local Council knowledge seed branch.

Council Population (latest est) – As per the Local Council knowledge seed branch.

COUNCIL CALCULATED GEODEMOGRAPHIC DATA
The data values in the following fields have been calculated from the above geo-data fields about the council that we did find in the public domain. They provide a useful ‘like for like’ comparison between different Local Councils or individual Electoral wards. At the time of writing, these are not available anywhere that we could find in the public domain.

Council Average Ward Area (sq km)* – This is calculated by diividing the ‘Council Area Inland (sq km)’ by the ‘Council Electoral Wards’.
The ‘Council Average Ward Area (sq km)’ value gives a relative (though very crude) measure on the average size of ‘patch’ of the 3 or 4 councillors in each ward notionally have to cover.

Note(s)
1. It is the job of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland to initially create, and periodically review, electoral ward boundaries and the number of councillors therein based on the criteria defined by Scottish Government ministers (e.g. “a total of 1,227 councillors, 3 or 4 in each multi member ward, for all 32 Scottish Local Councils”). Obviously this is a very complex operation involving much data gathering & nuanced spatial analysis followed by lots of public consultation.

Council Average Area Per-Councillor (sq km)* – This is calculated by dividing the ‘Council Area Inland (sq km)’ by the ‘Council Elected Councillors TOTAL’. The ‘Council Average Area Per-Councillor (sq km)’ value gives a relative (though very crude) measure on the average size of patch each councillor notionally has to cover, though the multi-member ward system means that this figure is very notional. The equivelant calculation for each individual ward is a more useful figure.

Council Average Population Per-Councillor* – This is calculated by dividing the ‘Council Population (latest est)’ by the ‘Council Elected Councillors TOTAL’. The ‘Council Average Population Per-Councillor (sq km)’ value gives a relative (though very crude) measure of ‘local representative democracy’.

Attached Hyperlinks: Multiple
See next section for full details.

All Local Council Electoral Wards Knowledge Seed Branch
One of our philosophies at KnowledgeMappers is not to reinvent the wheel whenever possible. Thus we include hyperlinks to original official / definitive / plain old useful knowledge sources whenever possible, as well as links to Wikipedia pages for additional, “bigger picture” context (often not obvious, or even absent from, the original source). By doing this…

original sources get used more often, by more people.
errors get spotted quicker, thereby improving the information quality for everybody.
updates get promulgated sooner to end users.
rather than us having to interpret original sources to create further information resources around “big picture” context for a subject we are not experts in, users of our map can “get it straight from the horses mouth” as it were, so everybody benefits.

greatly reduces the visual clutter of the map.
means a full basket of links to official / definitive / useful knowledge resources about the subject can stay with the seed branch if it is re-used in other maps.

The chain icon at the end of a branch (rather than the favicon (icon) served by the linked-to website) indicates where a branch has more than one hyperlink.

iii) Not all of the resources below will exist for all Local Councils.

The following knowledge resource links are attached to this seed branch (arranged in alphabetical order within the groupings)…

General Knowledge Resource Links

Structure e.g. all on one page or sub-pages
‘Slicing & dicing’ display options…
- Alphabetically by name
- by Ward – Note the wards may be listed numerically by LGBCS ward number rather than alphabetically (but may not even include the ward number in the listing!).
- by Political Party – Note that some don’t even include the political party affiliation on the’ all councillor’ page, only on the individual councillor page.
Inter-linking e.g. sometimes there is no link to the register of members interests, sometimes there is, sometimes it is included within the page.

Geographic Knowledge Resource Links

Council Website: Map page(s) (if present) – The variety and quality of map resources published by Scottish Local Councils in regard to their Electoral Wards is very varied….

Downloadable ‘static’ PDF files showin gthe ward boiundary.
Online digital mapping system, where boundaries can be viewed along with other ‘layers’ of map data about the Council Area (though unfortunately such is the technical setup of these that links to views of specific things are not provided and cannot be created without a considerable amount of effort).
No extra resources but links to the Local Government Boundary Commission Ward Maps on their website.
No geographic info at all :-(.

Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland Latest Electoral Review of the Council Ward Boundaries & the Number of Councillors – The Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS) is the body officially tasked with defining electoral ward boundaries and the number councillors to be elected to them, and continuing to review these arrangements on a regular basis…

Note(s)
i) Most Council Area wards conform to the 5th Electoral Review carried out by the LGBCS, whose final recommendations for the number of councillors and the electoral ward boundaries in each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities was submitted to Scottish Ministers on 26 May 2016 and came into effect for elections held on or after 4th May 2017.

ii) For those Council Areas where the recommendations for the 5th Review were rejected by ministers, the number of councillors and the electoral ward boundaries of the 4th Review remain in place. For reference these are…

Argyll and Bute Council
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar [Council of the Western Isles]
Dundee City Council
Scottish Borders Council
Shetland Islands Council

an overview map of the whole Council Area showing where all the wards are relative to each other,
Individual ward maps

Electoral Knowledge Resource Links

Council Website: ‘Election’ pages – Local Councils are responsible for facilitating voting in ALL elections and referendums, local or national, so all council websites have a section on ‘Elections’…

These cover all the elections the council organises. We have only included the pages relevant to the local council ones.
These may or may not include the actual results of the election.
Where results are covered, they may not include the full results at ward level of all stages of the single transferable vote counting i.e. you can’t actually rely on the level of detail found in the other sources of local council election results to be present on the actual council website!

Denis Mollison Scottish Council Election May 2017: Summary of Election Results for Council Area – Denis is Professor of Applied Probability (Emeritus) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Through his own website he has published the full results of the 2017 and 2012 Scottish Local Council elections at council and ward level (including all the counting stages of the Single Transferable Vote proportional representation system used).

Wikipedia: Summary article of 2017 Scottish Council Election Results for Council Area – Wikipedia has the results of all local council elections down to ward level going back a considerable period of time and is the best single place to get an overview of the changes in political composition of local councils over time.

Wikipedia: Article sub-section summarising changes to councillor composition since the last election – As well as obvious by-elections, if present this section can also include incidences of councillors resigning from their party (by force or voluntarily, permanently or temporarily), often to sit as ‘independents’, thereby altering the political composition of the council from that which was elected.

Individual Electoral Ward General Seed Branch

Individual Local Council Electoral Wards Knowledge Seed Branches
MindManager provides an unparalleled range of ‘information cartography’ functionality that enables contextual knowledge to be embedded and attached to map branches in multiple ways…

Branch Outline Shape
For geographic area seed branches the outline shape indicates the nature of it’s borders with it’s equivelant neighbours…

CIRCLE = all coastal borders (ie. ‘island(s)’)

ROUNDED RECTANGLE = mixed coastal & land borders

HEXAGON = all land borders (ie. ‘land-locked’)

Note(s)
i) Assignment of shapes to geographic area seed branches is controlled by MindManager’s unique Smart Rule feature using the ‘SLC WARD – Borders Types’ tag (eqivelant to thematic mapping in GIS).

Image: Thumbnail Ward Location Map MindManager allows a single image to be embedded within a branch. However with a bit of forethought (and some ‘jigery pokery’ with image editing software we can create one that incorporates more than one visual element so that, like the ‘rich’ branch text, more core knowledge can be ‘packed in’ to a single branch without overwhelming the user.

‘Thumbnail’ Ward Location Map – This thumbnail map (which has been created by us) locates the ward relative to the other wards in the council area, but without a background basemap.

Note(s)
i) All images are optimised to reduce the file size.

Text: Ward name & unique identifying codes
Thanks to MindManager’s unique ability to handle ‘rich’ text – the ability to variably format individual chatracters within a single text ‘string’ – we can pack several different pieces of ‘core knowledge’ into the text of a single branch without it visually overwhelming the user.

Ward Name – This is taken from the council’s website. However as is commonly the case with administrative areas, there are some discrepancies in the names used between official sources, making it difficult to know exactly which one is ‘correct’. This is especially true when…

several geographic localities are grouped together to form the name of the ward (there are 2 approaches – forward slash vs punctuation).
the LGBCS assigned ward number is used in the listing.

As illustrated by East Lothian Council…

Ward Name As Listed In Order On The East Lothian Council Website	Ward Name As Listed In Order On The Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland Website
01 Musselburgh	1 Musselburgh
02 Preston / Seton / Gosford	2 Preston, Seton and Gosford
03 Tranent / Macmerry	3 Tranent, Wallyford and Macmerry
04 North Berwick Coastal	4 North Berwick Coastal
05 Haddington and Lammermuir	5 Haddington and Lammermuir
06 Dunbar and East Linton	6 Dunbar and East Linton

These illustrate the following issues with…

Some local councils list the wards alphabetically, whilst others do it numerically by LGBCS number (sometimes they don’t show the number in the listing). The LGBCS always list them numerically.
Even within one Local Council (East Lothian) both forward slashes and punctuation are used in the ward names.
The LGBCS is inconsistent and uses forward slashes for some Local Council Areas, and punctuation for others.
Sometimes the name on the LGBCS website mirrors exactly the names used by the council, sometimes it doesn’t e.g. ’03 Tranent / Macmerry’ vs ‘3 Tranent, Wallyford and Macmerry’

LGBCS Ward Number – This is an internal reference ward number (from ‘1’ to however many wards there are in the Council Area), which seems to have been arbitarily assigned by the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS), the body officially tasked with defining electoral wards and their boundaries).
It is used by the LGBCS extensively…

Wards are listed in numerical rather than alphabetic order on the LGBCS website.
The ward number is incorporated into the file names of the ward maps.

And on council websites…

the ward number is often included in the ward listings.
wards may even be listed numerically rather than alphabetically (with no explanation of why the wards are numbered in this apparently arbitrary way!)

S12 = Unitary Authority
S13 = Ward or Electoral Division
S14 = Westminster Parliamentary Constituency
S15 = European Electoral Region
S16 = Scottish Parliament Constituency
S17 = Scottish Parliament Electoral Region
S21 = National Park
S22 = Travel to Work Area
S23 = Police Force Area
S34 = Workplace Zone
S92 = Country

By-Election Log – The incidence of by-elections in individual wards will be logged here. Not the results though, or the ‘shananigans’ of individual councillors, which will recorded in the ‘Political Knowledge Atlas’.

Embedded Data Fields: Ward Geostatistical ‘Facts & Figures’
Single data fields embedded in the seed branch are another unique MindManager feature. They provide quick reference of ‘core’ geodemographic data that provides context and enables meaningful comparison between similar areas, saving the user the time and effort of looking them up in the linked knowledge resources. These are taken from official data stats & profiles like the Scottish Government Statistics Portal or the National Records of Scotland if available, or derived from the OS BoundaryLine dataset by us using GIS software if not (thus making it more readily available in the public domain).

Note(s)
i) The Data Fields can be hidden / shown by clicking the green toggle arrow just above the top right corner.

ii) Data Fields are like single cells in spreadsheets..

The data can be numeric or text.
The values in cells can be calculated from other cells either in the same branch or in other branches. Formulas that define the values are built using MindManager’s ‘Autocalc’ feature (again unique).
The values in data fields may be used to control aspects of the visual formatting (eg. colour or shape) of the seed branch using Mindmanager’s ‘Smart Rules’ feature (again unique).

The data fields embeded in this seed topic are…

BASIC ELECTORAL FACTORS
These are set by statute by the Scottish Government and are used as factors in most of our subsequent calculations…

Ward Elected Councillors – Electoral Wards are represented by either 3 or 4 councillors, as per the recommendations of the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland (LGBCS).

WARD AREA MEASUREMENTS
As per the area figures for the whole council (see the discussion for the Council Knowledge Seed Branch above), we have used the data from the OS BoundaryLine GIS dataset.

Ward Area Total (sq km) – The area value in the OS BoundaryLine ‘Hectares’ field expressed in square kilomtres.

Ward Area Non-inland (sq km) – The area value in the OS BoundaryLine ‘Non_Inland_Area’ field expressed in square kilomtres. This is the size of the area between the high and low watermarks.

Ward Area Inland (sq km)* – The area value left by subtracting the OS BoundaryLine ‘Non_Inland_Area’ field from the ‘Hectares’ field expressed in square kilomtres.
This has been taken by us as a proxy for the total land area of the administrative unit, however in reality it will still include the area of any freshwater bodies like lochs, which can be quite large in some parts of Scotland.

Ward Area Per-Councillor (sq km)* – This is calculated by dividing the ‘Ward Area Inland (sq km)’ by the ‘Ward Elected Councillors’. The ‘Ward Area Per-Councillor (sq km)’ value gives a relative measure on the average size of ‘patch’ each councillor notionally has to cover, though the multi-member ward system means that this figure is very notional.

WARD POPULATION FIGURES
Population data for administrative units in Scotland are available from the following sources…

The official census count, carried out every 10 years by the Scottish Government (the last one was in 2011). All the census data can be found on the Scotland’s Census website).
Ongoing official mid-year estimates for most units are published every year on the the statistics.gov.scot website (for convenience all are collected together in a ‘Data cube’).
Other ‘Special Area’ Population Estimates are published in the Population section of the National Records of Scotland website as a downloadable spreadsheet.

Ward Population (latest est) – This figure is taken from the ‘Population Key Facts’ section of the Scottish Government Statistics website entry for the Council Area, and is the most up to date ‘official estimate’ of population (also compiled as a ‘data cube spreadsheet’ table for all geographic areas).
From the explanatory notes on the Scottish Government Statistics website…
“Annual publication of mid-year population estimates by age and sex as at 30 June every year, where population for higher geographies is aggregated from the population estimates for 2011 Data Zones.”

Ward Pop Density (latest est) (per sp km)* – This has been calculated manually by us by dividing the ‘Ward Population (latest est)’ by the ‘Ward Area Land (sq km)’ figure we have calculated from BoundarlyLine…

Note(s)
i) Obviously the fact that ‘land area’ still includes freshwater bodies like lochs has implications when it comes to calculating population density.

ii) Whatever the shortcomings in calculating the absolute value, of as much importance is the change in that value over time (as long as the way of calculating it remains the same).

Ward Population Per-Councillor (latest est)* – This is calculated by dividing the ‘Ward Population (latest est)’ by the ‘Ward Elected Councillors’. The ‘Ward Population Per-Councillor (latest est)’ value gives a relative (though very crude) measure of ‘local representative democracy’.

Note(s)
i) Within MindManager tags…

provide a useful means of internal navigation between map topics (clicking on the branch that is shown as being tagged with that marker in the ‘Index Task Pane’ will immediately focus the map on that banch).
can be generated automatically from branches (the title of the parent branch is the group name and those of all the immediate sub-branches become the individual tags within the group) .
can be copied and pasted in their groups from one map to another.

NAV – SLC Wards – Each Local Council Ward seed branch is tagged with it’s own index marker, created from the branch text itself. Thus there are 2 ‘parts’ to the marker tag – Electoral Ward Name (Identifying Codes) eg. Barrhead, Liboside and Uplawmoor (Ward 1 – GB-ERW – S13002914).

GEO Borders
The nature of the council’s borders with it’s neighbours…

SLC WARD – Borders Types – As per the topic shape, this Marker Group indicates the physical geography of the local authority’s borders with all of it’s equivalent neighbours, in respect to the ocean.
These tags will enable the filtering of a map to show / hide those areas that do / do not have a coastline.
Possible tags…

All Coastline (Island)
Mixed
No Coastline (Land-locked)

GEO Unique Identifying Codes
Within the topic text we incorporate unique identifiers codes for geographic areas for easy cross-reference with other data sources, especially GIS databases.
We also add some of the truly unique codes as ‘geo’ index marker tags to the topic. Only one topic in the map will have that ‘geo tag’. This offers interesting possibilities for adding further content at a later date.

SLC WARD – ONS Code – As per the code incorporated into the branch text.

GEO ‘Look Up’ Geographies
In the world of Geographic Information (GI) a ‘look up’ defines the link between one geographic feature and another. Most commonly this is between geographic areas of different ‘types’ that share the same geographic space in whole or in part. For example a Local Council Electoral Ward will also coincide with ‘higher’ electoral geographies of Scottish Parliament Constituencies & Regions, and United Kingdom Parliament Constituencies. Of course the boundaries of the different geographies do not necessarily coincide or ‘nest’ exactly (though they might have done at one time). Thus relationships are often ‘one to many’, or even ‘many to many’, which is ‘database speak’ for ‘it’s complicated’ 🙂
Relationships are usually derived using computerised spatial analysis, with the results stored in ‘look-up tables‘ in databases or spreadsheets. ‘Geo’-tagging map branches that represent geographic areas is our hopefully useful alternative.
You can get more of an idea of the complexities of UK Geographihies from the handy UK Office of National Statistics Beginners Guide To UK Geography.

SLC WARD – UK Parliament Constituency – All the UK Parliament Constuencies that overlap with the Local Council Electoral Ward. There are 2 ‘parts’ to this marker – Constituency Name (ONS Code) eg. East Renfrewshire (S14000021).

Attached Hyperlinks: Multiple
See next section for full details.

Individual Local Council Electoral Wards Knowledge Seed Branch
One of our philosophies at KnowledgeMappers is not to reinvent the wheel whenever possible. Thus we include hyperlinks to original official / definitive / plain old useful knowledge sources whenever possible, as well as links to Wikipedia pages for additional, “bigger picture” context (often not obvious, or even absent from, the original source). By doing this…

original sources get used more often, by more people.
errors get spotted quicker, thereby improving the information quality for everybody.
updates get promulgated sooner to end users.
rather than us having to interpret original sources to create further information resources around “big picture” context for a subject we are not experts in, users of our map can “get it straight from the horses mouth” as it were, so everybody benefits.

greatly reduces the visual clutter of the map.
means a full basket of links to official / definitive / useful knowledge resources about the subject can stay with the seed branch if it is re-used in other maps.

The chain icon at the end of a branch (rather than the favicon (icon) served by the linked-to website) indicates where a branch has more than one hyperlink.

iii) Not all of the resources below will exist for all Local Councils.

The following knowledge resource links are attached to this seed branch (arranged in alphabetical order within the groupings)…

General Knowledge Resource Links

Council Website: ‘Councillors by Ward’ page – This may be a separate page for each ward, or the subsection of a single page, or just the general ‘Councillors’ page if there’s no listing by ward.

Council Website: Ward Profile – Very occasionally councils produce their own ward profiles, combining information from different official statistical sources and their own comment to provide a deeper understanding.

Scottish Government Statistics Portal: Individual electoral ward profile – This is the Ward section on the geostatistical atlas section of the statistics.gov.scot website. As well as key facts, the data about the individual Ward is grouped as…

Population
Children
Education
Training
Housing
Health
Community
Crime
Justice

Geographic Knowledge Resource Links

Council Website: Map page(s) (if present) – The variety and quality of map resources published by Scottish Local Councils in regard to their Electoral Wards is very varied….

Downloadable ‘static’ PDF files showing the ward boiundary.
Online digital mapping system, where boundaries can be viewed along with other ‘layers’ of map data about the Council Area (though unfortunately such is the technical setup of these that links to views of specific things are not provided and cannot be created without a considerable amount of effort).
No extra resources but links to the Local Government Boundary Commission Ward Maps on their website.
No geographic info at all :-(.

Argyll and Bute Council
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar [Council of the Western Isles]
Dundee City Council
Scottish Borders Council
Shetland Islands Council

an overview map of the whole Council Area showing where all the wards are relative to each other,
Individual ward maps

Note(s)
i) The 4th and 5th electoral Review maps have different styles so it is easy to see to tell which boundaries apply at a glance.

Electoral Knowledge Resource Links

These cover all the elections the council organises. We have only included the pages relevant to the local council ones.
These may or may not include the actual results of the election.
Where results are covered, they may not include the full results at ward level of all stages of the single transferable vote counting i.e. you can’t actually rely on the level of detail found in the other sources of local council election results to be present on the actual council website!

Denis Mollison Scottish Council Election May 2017: Summary of Election Results for Individual Electoral Ward – Denis is Professor of Applied Probability (Emeritus) at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Through his own website he has published the full results of the 2017 and 2012 Scottish Local Council elections at council and ward level (including all the counting stages of the Single Transferable Vote proportional representation system used).

Wikipedia: Summary article of 2017 Scottish Council Election Results for Council Area #Individual Ward – Wikipedia has the results of all local council elections down to ward level going back a considerable period of time and is the best single place to get an overview of the changes in political composition of local councils over time. The results for each ward are usually a sub-section within the page.

Hyperlinks to official / definitive / ‘plain old useful’ knowledge resources found in the public domain is one of the main focus of our knowledge maps. Links are added to our maps in 2 ways…

Multiple Hyperlinks Attached To Seed Branches – MindManager has the unique ability to attach multiple hyperlinks to a single map branch. This means that…

maps need fewer branches so are less visually cluttered.
a single branch can become a mini knowledge portal in it’s own right (one of the reasons why we call them ‘knowledge seed branches’).
links to core knowledge resources (usually the most important links taken from the Link Collections) can remain with the branch when it’s re-used in other maps, whether or not it’s the kep focus of that map.

The multiple hyperlinks attached to the different types of knowledge seed branches in this map are already detailed in the ‘Seed Branches’ tab.

Knowledge Link Sub-Branch Collections – Sub-branches – each with a single attached hyperlink to an external knowledge resource – are grouped into related collections, such as ‘General Knowledge Resources’ or ‘Geographic Knowledge Resources’. This makes for easier, more ‘thumb friendly’ browsing & discovery of knowledge resources, which helps in more intensive activities like prolonged desktop research.

The knowledge link sub-branch collections in this map are detailed below…

**Note – The collections of links to general, geographic & electoral knowledge resources about electoral wards are presented in 2 ‘levels’ – a single, ‘Whole Council’ collection for all the wards in the council as a whole, and collections for each ‘Individual Ward’.**

General Knowledge Resource Links Collection

Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards

This collection contains links to official / definitive / ‘plain old useful’ general knolwedge resources about the Scottish Local Council. It is an ideal starting point for those who want to find out more about about it, be it for casual browsing or more focused desktop research for a specific purpose…

Note(s)
i) It is usually the case that the only council resource listed will be the council’s web page on which councillors are listed by ward, though some do produce geo-statistical profiles of their individual wards.

ii) There will always be a link to the Council Area Electoral Ward section on the geostatistical atlas section of the statistics.gov.scot online data portal, where a range of ‘official’ data about the ward can be explored.

The following knowledge resource links form this collection…

Population
Children
Education
Training
Housing
Health
Community
Crime
Justice

Geographic Knowledge Resource Links Collection

Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards

This collection contains links to official / definitive / ‘plain old useful’ geographic knolwedge resources about the the Scottish Local Council. It is a mixture of…

Static Map Libraries – Collections of human created cartographic image files that can be downloaded and viewed offline.
Online Mapping Services – Automatically generate maps, often with different ‘layers’ of related geographic features that can be turned on or off and additional useful geographic tools (eg. route finder). These can usually only be accessed via a live internet connection.
Spatial Data Repositiories – Containing data files of computer-readable geographic information for use by anybody with the right specialised (‘GIS’) software. As well as being downloadable files, they may also be available as a feature service that is streamed directly to your application using an API.

Note(s)
i) It is sometimes the case that the only resource listed will be the relevant Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland’s Electoral Review static (i.e. a PDF) ward boundary map (as noted elsewhere this is not always from the most recent (i.e. Fifth) Review).

ii) Councils sometimes (but mostly don’t) provide a static overview map of wards. They may have an interactive online mapping system on which all ward boundaries (and sometimes councillor details) can be displayed. However such is the technical setup of these systems that it is not possible to externally link to views of specific objects with a single ‘layer’ (eg. individual wards) in the map, only the map page as a whole, and so users have to go to the effort of turning on the layers they require and ‘zooming in’ to the feature they’re looking for each time they open they open it.

iii) It is surprisingly common for there to be poor / no linking to the geographic resources from the ‘councillor by ward page’ so users would have to hunt for them (if they even knew they existed) in the absence of our handy map 🙂

The following knowledge resource links form this collection…

Council Website: Map page(s) (if present) – The variety and quality of map resources published by Scottish Local Councils in regard to their Electoral Wards is very varied….

Downloadable ‘static’ PDF files showing the ward boiundary.
Online digital mapping system, where boundaries can be viewed along with other ‘layers’ of map data about the Council Area (though unfortunately such is the technical setup of these that links to views of specific things are not provided and cannot be created without a considerable amount of effort).
No extra resources but links to the Local Government Boundary Commission Ward Maps on their website.
No geographic info at all :-(.

Argyll and Bute Council
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar [Council of the Western Isles]
Dundee City Council
Scottish Borders Council
Shetland Islands Council

an overview map of the whole Council Area showing where all the wards are relative to each other,
Individual ward maps

Note(s)
i) The 4th and 5th electoral Review maps have different styles so it is easy to see to tell which boundaries apply at a glance.

Electoral Knowledge Resource Links Collection

Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards

This collection contains links to official / definitive / ‘plain old useful’ knolwedge resources about elections in the Scottish Local Council Ward, both the nationally held elections that take place every 5 years (last one in May 2017), and subsequent by elections initiated by the resignation or death of a sitting counsellor. It is an ideal starting point for those who want to find out more about about them, be it for casual browsing or more focused desktop research for a specific purpose…

Note(s)
i) Councils vary a lot on how they present this knowledge on their own websites, and often it is surprisingly difficult to find given that that the election of councillors is the primary process of local democracy. For example…

no election results to be obviously found (though they may be buried in there somewhere).
election results only of individual wards, not of the council as a whole.
results only in static reports that need to be downloaded (especially if combined wth the previous point of a separate document for each ward).
‘headline’ results only, missing the detail of the mult-stage counts of the proportional representation electoral system used.

ii) Fortunately there are enough ‘political anoraks’ out there that Wikipedia has all the knowledge you could need about the most recent, and all previous, elections to the Local Council, including by-elections, down to individual ward level. There is also plenty of additional contextual knolwedge.

iii) The Edinburgh based academic Prof Denis Mollison has taken it upon himself to comprehensively document the results of the last two (2017 & 2012) Local Council elections on his own website. This includes the details of all the mult-stage counts of the proportional representation electoral system down to individual ward level, although there is no additional contextual knowledge though.

The following knowledge resource links form this collection…

These cover all the elections the council organises. We have only included the pages relevant to the local council ones.
These may or may not include the actual results of the election.
Where results are covered, they may not include the full results at ward level of all stages of the single transferable vote counting i.e. you can’t actually rely on the level of detail found in the other sources of local council election results to be present on the actual council website!

We are continually striving to find further, freely accessible in the public domain definitive / official / plain old useful 🙂 knowledge resources to link to in our maps, as well as keeping the existing links up to date. The changelogs below summarise the actions undertaken to initially create – and subsequently update – this knowledge map.

Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards General & Geographic Knowledge Atlas (30 Sep 2019)

Version – 1.0

Links to knowledge resources – 5.511

Map Branches – 4,461

File Sizes – HTML5 – 23.5 MB; MindManager (.mmap) – 16.1 MB

Basemap Framework – Scottish Local Councils General & Geographic Knowledge Atlas (19 Sep 2019) (v1.0)

Actions – The main work done in making this version of the map was…

Initial creation of knowledge seed branch framework of local council electoral wards, as additions to the main branch framework of Local Councils from the basemap.
Addition of collections of sub-branch links to general, geographic & electoral knowledge resources about them.

Note(s)
i) Given the reasonably constant ‘churn’ of local councillors due to illness, death and party shenanigans, it’s our intention to update this map every 3 to 4 months. The precisie timing though is dependant on the actual dates of the local by-elections, which tend to come in clumps.

Map Facts

Here are some of the ‘fun facts’ 😉 about Scotland’s 354 Local Council Electoral Wards that we have discovered (and embedded!) during the process of creating this map…

Geographic Area

Smallest & Largest

sq km

Hillhead Ward [Glasgow City Council]

sq km

Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh Ward [Highland Council]

Population (2018 Est)

Smallest & Largest

people

Lerwick North Ward [Shetland Islands Council]

people

Southside/Newington Ward [City of Edinburgh Council]

Population Density

Smallest & Largest

people per sq km

North, West and Central Sutherland Ward [Highland Council]

people per sq km

Hillhead Ward [Glasgow City Council]

Borders With Neighbouring Electoral Wards

With respect to land & sea

All Coastal Borders

(ie. 'Islands')

Electoral Wards

Land & Coastal Borders

(ie. 'Mixed')

Electoral Wards

All Land Borders

(ie. 'Land-Locked')

Electoral Wards

Map Features

We take full advantage of MindManager’s many unique ‘information cartography’ features when creating our unique maps so we can pack in 1000’s of ‘bits’ of knowledge into a single, visually structured, intuitive to navigate document that can be easily shared. Here are the main features of this Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards General & Geographic Knowledge Atlas (30 Sep 2019) …

Big Map With 1000's Of Branches & Links And Capacity For Plenty More

With 5,512 knowledge resource links over 4,460 branches, this map is a useful, contextual knowledge resource in it’s own right, as well as being a visually structured index of the best definitive / official / plain old useful knowledge resources available in the public domain about Scotland’s 354 Local Council Electoral Wards. Thanks to MindManager’s unique capabilities it has plenty of spare capacity for further content to be added in the future, or re-purposed as a basis for other maps.

Main Branches Create Robust Visual Framework For 'Seed Branches'

The 1st level branches form the main (‘org-tree’) visual framework within which the map content of interest sits. It is a simple ‘A – Z’ layout, with the 32 Scottish Local Councils arranged alphabetically in 5 columns of approximately equal sizes to pack as much in to a ‘single screen view’ as possible.

Visually Rich 'Knowledge Seed' Branch For Every Scottish Local Council

The 2nd level branches are ‘knowledge seed points’ for each Scottish Local Council, to which links to public domain knowledge resources about them are attached. Visually rich & information dense, they contain the name & official area identifier codes in variably formatted (‘rich’) text – a unique MindManager featue. Visually the combined logo & thumbnail location map image aids user navigation and provides spatial context, whilst the variation in topic shape indicates the status of the borders with neighbouring councils – all coastlal (ie. island), mixed or all land (ie. landlocked). The full list of visual knowledge embedded within this seed topic is given in the map summary above.

Visually Rich 'Knowledge Seed' Branch For All Electoral Wards In The Local Council

The 3rd level branches are ‘knowledge seed points’ for the electoral wards that make up the Local Council, both as a whole and individually. Visually rich & information dense, they contain a good quality thumbnail image (ie. still readable & usable when zoomed in) of the official Local Government Boundary Commission ward overview map to provide spatial context. Embedded data fields – many of them autocalculated and not available elsewhere in the public domain – give geodemographic context. There are also multiple hyperlinks to public domain knowledge resources about the wards as a whole. The full list of knowledge embedded within, and attached to, this seed topic is given in the map summary above.

Whole Council & Individual Ward Knowledge Resource Sub-branch Collections

Knowledge resources about the council’s electoral wards are split into 2 sub-collections at ‘Whole Council’ and ‘Individual’ level.

General, Geographic & Electoral Knowledge Resource Collections For All Wards As A Whole

The Council Electoral Wards as a whole sub-branch collections – each with a single hyperlink to official / definitive / at least practical & useful online knowledge resources – are grouped into related collections for ‘general’, ‘geographic’ and ‘electoral’ knowledge resources. These are starting points for knowledge discovery and subsequent more detailed (‘desktop’) research. (MindManager software users have the advantage of being able to add to these branches as they go). The full list of links in the sub-branch collections attached to this seed branch is given in the map summary above.

Visually Rich 'Knowledge Seed' Branch For Each Of Scotland's 354 Electoral Wards

As for the ‘Local Council’, the seed branches for each individual ward are a visually rich mixture of embedded and attached knowledge. They contain the name & official ward identifier codes in variably formatted (‘rich’) text, a thumbnail location map image aids user navigation and provides spatial context, aided by the variation in topic shape indicating the status of the borders with neighbouring councils – all coastlal (ie. island), mixed or all land (ie. landlocked. The data fields – many of them autocalculated and not available elsewhere in the public domain – provide geodemographic context, supplemented by the topic shape, which indicates the status of the borders with neighbouring councils – all coastlal (ie. island), mixed or all land (ie. landlocked). There are also multiple hyperlinks to the public domain general, geographic & electoral knowledge resources. The full list of knowledge embedded within, and attached to, this seed topic is given in the map summary above.

General, Geographic & Electoral Knowledge Resource Collections For Each Individual Ward

The sub-branch collections for each individual Electoral Ward is the same as those for all wards as a whole – ‘general’, ‘geographic’ and ‘electoral’ knowledge resources. The full list of links in the sub-branch collections attached to this seed branch is given in the map summary above.

Attached Multiple Hyperlinks To Public Domain Knowledge Resources

Seed Branches have multiple hyperlinks attached to them (yet another unique feature of MindManager maps), which link to the best definitive / official / plain old useful knowledge resources available in the public domain about the subject. The ‘definable link text’ gives clarty as to the resource being linked to (which can be very variable if left to the default). As well as increasing the amount of knowledge that can be ‘squeezed’ into a map without increasing the ‘visual clutter’ of additional branches, it means these links can be retained if the seed branches are used in other maps, or this map is re-purposed. The full list of multiple knowledge resource hyperlinks attached to all the seed topics in this map is given in the map summary above.

Index Marker Tag Groups Enable 'Geo Intelligent' & Other Map Filtering

Branches in the map may be tagged with one or more ‘index markers’ from one or more ‘marker groups’. These enable intelligent map filtering and quick navigation. Many of the tags are ‘geographic’ in nature such that branches are tagged with ‘where’ they are – eg. administrative or electoral areas. This gives the map in-built ‘spatial intelligence’ and the ability to be ‘geo-filtered’. (MindManager software users can copy and paste any of the marker groups in any other maps). The full list of index marker tags attached to all the seed topics in this map is given in the map summary above.

Embedded Data Elements Provide Additional Contextual Knowledge

Data features embedded within seed branches – like spreadsheets, charts & data fields (another unique MindManager feature) – provide another ‘channel’ of knowlegde that adds context to the more detailed knowledge contained in the public domain resources linked to in the map. Just like in a normal spreadsheet, some of the data field values may be ‘auto-calculated’ from the others using formulae, creating data not found elsewhere in the public domain. They can also be used to ‘conditionally format’ the map eg. colouring the branches based on a particular data value (the equivelant of ‘thematic mapping’ in GIS). The full list of data embedded within all the seed topics in this map is given in the map summary above.

Map Legend Branch Describes Each Topic 'Type' With Links To Further Information

Every map needs to have a legend that explains the cartographic structure, colours and symbology used. The ‘Map Legend’ branch describes the sub-components of each ‘type’ of map branch, with links to further knowledge resources where necessary.

'Contributing Online Knowledge-bases Branch' With Links To Further Information

We hunt down and assess many official / definitive / at least practical & useful online knowledge resources in the process of creating our maps. The ‘Contributing Online Knowledge-bases’ branch has links to all the ones that are actually linked to in the main map content, as well as some others that are a good source of general knowledge about the subject. It is a frustrating fact of life that some resources are organised better than others, and not all are ‘linkable to’ at the individual ‘building block’ level and so can’t be included in seed branches.

Built-in Topic Styles Enable Quick Visual Reformatting

The visual formatting of all the map elements is controlled via our structured system of topic styles, which makes for easier alteration ‘on the hoof’ and therefore quicker map building. (MindManager software users can change the appearance of the whole map with just a few clicks eg. to match their own ‘in-house’ style & branding.)

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Nicolaus Copernicus

16th Century Mathematician & Astronomer

Tae ken that we ken whit we ken, and tae ken that we dinnae ken whit we dinnae ken, that's whit it's aw aboot, ye ken?

Rab C. Nesbitt

Contemporary Scottish Philosopher

And whilst we're aboot it, tae ken where the hell ye get haud of whit ye need to ken, when ye need to ken it, if ye dinnae ken it awready?

Rab C. Nesbitt

Contemporary Scottish Philosopher

These knowledge maps show the 'national local' building blocks of Scotland as they exist today, but they can also be used to strategically think about what could be in the future, and operationally plan the delivery of what will be tomorrow.

Angus McDonald

Scotland The Map Project Director and Knowledge Mappers Founder & CEO

Do not only go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Philosopher and Transcendentalist

The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.

Erwin Schrodinger

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist & Cat Owner (Part-time)

A map is the greatest of all epic poems. It's lines and colours show the realisation of great dreams.

Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor

'Father of Photo-Journalism' & 1st Full-Time Editor Of National Geographic Magazine

Comments

We are continually striving to improve our Scottish knowlegde maps and value your feedback, suggestions & comments.

1 thought on “Scottish Local Council Electoral Wards – General, Geographic & Electoral Knowledge Atlas (30 Sep 2019)”

Big Angus

16 October, 2019 at 12:03 pm

Pretty awsome dude. particularly love the embedded map.
Reply

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