Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Where can I get help ?
Why has LASOS been created ?
Why does LASOS publish Local Authority data to the public at large ?
How does LASOS engage with the public ?
Why do I need to click on a Map Button to download the 'Renesis Player' ?
Why am I having problems with the Website ?
Why isn’t my Postcode recognised ?
Do I need to Register to use the System ?
What do I need to know Quickly get going in LASOS ?
What are the Geography Boundaries ?
What is a Ward and a sub-ward (lsoa) ?
What do the colour codes on the maps mean ?
What is Standard Deviation ?
What do the 'Rates' mean ?
What do Confidence Intervals (lower confidence level [LCL] and upper confidence level [UCL] ) mean ?
What about Data Protection ?
What about Copyright ?
What are the Acorn People Categories ?
What are the Indices of Multiple Deprivation ?
How does LASOS show Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour ?
How does LASOS show Fire & Rescue Incidents ?
Road Traffic Accidents Profile
What is the Childrens Wellbeing Index ?
Who runs LASOS ?
Who are the people who built LASOS ?
How do I get trained to use LASOS?
Where can I find better data/information ?
Data used by Local Authorities can effectively inform members of the public and councillors about local level numbers, rates and geographical locations for Outcomes, Events, Demand and Delivery in relation to the Services provided by the Local Authorities and Institutions within South Yorkshire. This empowers South Yorkshire communities to hold their local authorities and public organisations to account for what is happening and encourage active citizenship through enabling informed involvement at a local level.
In addition, LASOS operates as a data exchange hub, enabling policy and research workers throughout the county to contribute and extract information whilst benefiting from the systems tools for publishing reports, maps and charts
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Providing more information to communities about performance in their local area;
Enabling better engagement between local authorities, partners and public;
Encouraging and enabling citizens to actively contribute and/or be involved in local decision making.
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Whilst LASOS is primarily intended for policy and research - the LASOS Front Page has been designed to engage with the public by inviting them to enter a post code in order to obtain key information about where they live.
The Front Page shows the key statistics for the Ward which relates to the users postcode. In addition it displays crime and fire data for the community where the user resides.
In the future we are may be able to show other data such as Employment, Education and Health in and around the community where the member of the public lives.
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The map on this interent page needs to interact with the user and highlight information wherever that user clicks on the map. In order to do this, an Internet Plug-In program needs to installed on your computer. Clicking on the Renesis™ button will take you to a web site from which you can download this Plug-In program which is called the Renesis Player. You only need to do this once and the download button will disappear and your map will always work properly from then on whenever you visit LASOS.
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Areas around where you live are colour coded to show crime and fire rates relative to other areas. Specifically, areas are colour coded according to the rate per 1000 residents compare to the average for South Yorkshire. This is done using standard deviations - a statistical measure used here to calculate how close to the South Yorkshire average an area's rate is.
The following ranges are used within the areas on the map where the local rate compared to the average for South Yorkshire is:
Considerably higher than the average
Above the average
Straddling the average
Below the average
Considerably lower than the average or has no results in this particular time period
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Standard Deviation is quite a complicated concept and involves using a mathematical formula to calculate what the Standard Deviation is for any particular set of data. Standard Deviation is a measure which can tell you how spread out figures in a set of data are from the average.
Where the Standard Deviation is large the data will be spread out widely and where it is small the data will be clustered more closely.
A Standard Deviation figure can also be used to help describe how far from the average a particular part of a set of data is ( i.e. within one, two or three Standard Deviations).
In South Yorkshire, sub wards where the rate is within 0.5 Standard Deviations of the average rate, are described as "average" and coloured on our maps as yellow.
Those areas described as above average or below average are those with crime rates within 0.5 to One Standard Deviations of the average rate. Those described as High or Low are more than One Standard Deviations from the average rate. Areas that show no results in the relative period are also marked as low.
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We are currently only providing data for the area covered by South Yorkshire. If the postcode you have entered is valid and within the metropolitan boroughs of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham or Sheffield , please let us know using the Feedback form. Occasionally Multimap™ will not yet have any new or revised postcode in its system and thus we cannot locate it.
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One of the ways to deal with any LASOS performance issues is to “clear your cache” – this is because it takes the computer time to scan the cache before deciding whether to download web content or not, so if your PC is old or if your cache gets too big or has corrupted files in it, this can cause performance issues with LASOS.
To Clear your cashe:
Tools>
Internet Option>
General Tab>
Browsing History>
Delete Browsing History>
tick Temporary Internet Files / Cookies
Click Delete Button>
Click OK button
Close down and restart your browser.
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The average Ward in South Yorkshire contains around 15,000 people although this figure rises to 19,000 in Sheffield.
A Sub-Ward is technically called a 'Lower Super Output Area' (LSOA) by the Government. In England an "LSOA" is an area consisting of an average of 625 households.
In South Yorkshire there are 845 LSOA's, which for the sake of practicality are described as "sub-ward" areas.
The average Sub Ward in South Yorkshire contains around 1500 people.
In Sheffield the average Sub Ward contains around 730 Domestic Houses.
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Where shown, rates are usually per 1,000 head of population during the particular time period. Rates may also be per 1,000 households for some datasets such as 'Burglary' but this will be clearly shown where it applies. European Standardised Rates are per 100,000 head of population and are utilised by Health datasets.
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The Local Authorities and their Partner Agencies are satisfied that LASOS has considered the data protection issues in relation to mapping and that there are sufficient safeguards in terms of protecting the identity of victims of crime and fire. LASOS will continue to seek advice from Local Authority and Partner Agency Data Protection Officers as the site continues to be developed.
LASOS is bound by the Data Protection Act and Human Rights Act. LASOS is not allowed to publish data that may inadvertently identify a living individual with that data; to do so would be in direct contravention of these Acts. The LASOS steering group consists of Local Authority and Partner Agencies representatives who ensure full compliance with legislation governing which and in what form data can be released.
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This data is collected and held by South Yorkshire Police in a standard format booklet. This is formally named the National Casualty Recording Form (NCRF) and usually called ‘Stats 19’, at a local level.
The data is then validated by the Local Authorities for accuracy of location and a number of other parameters such as speed limit of road, road designation casualty age etc before being used to help formulate accident reduction measures such as Local Safety Schemes, Educative packages and Enforcement policies in South Yorkshire.
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The documentation relating to this index can be found at the using the following link:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/communities/childwellbeing2009
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- The LASOS Steering Group representing South Yorkshire Local Authorities (Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Police, Fire, NHS.)
- The LASOS Technical Group representing South Yorkshire Local Authorities (Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield, Police, Fire, NHS.)
- The LASOS Help Desk
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If you want to see more information than what has been made available to you on the Front Page - you can make a query about a neighbourhood, ward or other area, choose the sort of information you want to include and how you want to present it using maps, charts, graphs and tables.
Before you start looking for data, please read our disclaimer.
You need a small piece of standard software to be able to use the interactive mapping in this system. We recommend the free Renesis SVG Player from Examotion or the Adobe SVG Viewer. If you try the mapping and it doesn't work you will be told if you need to load a SVG plugin. If you are an employee of an organisation accessing the site from a work computer, you may need to ask your helpdesk or IT team to load SVG for you. The only browsers which fully meets the required standards for showing maps in LASOS is Internet Explorer followed closely by Firefox.
Click on the icon below then select 'Download' and 'Run' for the 'Microsoft® Internet Explorer® Plugin' option
- Here is a quick start guide to get you going...
1. Click the 'Browse' icon located at the top of this page
2. Select a Category
3. Select a Variable by clicking the 'Select Data' button
4. Click onto a '+' to open up the available geographies for the town you have selected.
- Select the particular geographies you want to see.
- Select the Variables you want to see.
- Click the 'View Data' button
6. Select the 'Map' or 'Chart' tab to explore how you can now show your data in a graph or map format.
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When you state the average, this is called a "point estimate", and it is usually the most believable answer.
When you state a range of answers that are possible, it is called a "confidence interval".
If a 95% confidence interval is from 1 to 10 you are saying that "you are 95% certain that the true answer is in that range ... somewhere".
While that average is the best estimate, you are saying that even the most extreme answers are possible -- though much less likely.
How far do you go on each side of the average to form this confidence interval depends on how confident you want to be. This is your choice, At any rate, the further you go on each side, the more likely you are to be right
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Training & Support is provided to Registered Users only.
There is no training provided for 'Public Users'. We have designed the Home Page to be as user friendly as possible to the public whilst trying to maintain a design that enables the 'experts' to do their job. If you are a member of the public you might find the Home page a little difficult at first to understand - but please dont give up. Press as many buttons as you like and get the feel of how the system behaves. Our experience is that after 15 mins you will soon be navigating around the system and able to start selecting some data. The more you experiment with the system - the more you will learn.
There is a range of On line Training Video's which explain with how to undertake various functions on LASOS. The video's are aimed at LASOS users who are already comfortable in using the system and understand some of the terminology.
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