Understanding Atlas

The Atlas tab takes you to the Atlas section, which allows you to

• browse for datasets which are structured by statistical and administrative areas via lists of areas or an interactive maps window. This helps you find areas and shows their name, their type (eg electoral ward), what areas they’re within or where they’re near.
• view how smaller geographies relate to the larger areas they are nested within (these are listed below the map visualisation).
• View an area profile which gives some key facts about the area you’ve selected
• View datasets which contain data for the area that you’ve selected
• Make custom collections of geographies by adding areas from the map to the [Data Cart](link to Data Cart user guide)

Go to the tab for Atlas in the top toolbar of the statistics.scot.gov homepage

This is the Atlas page. It’s a long page with a map, key facts, datasets for the area you’re viewing and an interactive map of the areas and organisations within that area. At the top of the page you get a static view of the area, its code and status on the left, plus the option to add to the Data Cart. If you’ve not searched for a particular area the default view is of the whole of Scotland. Note: you can enter a place name in the search box to find an area. Read more about this in the Find data by place name or postcode guide.

Beneath the static map on the Atlas page is an interactive section which provides key facts about the area you’re viewing. Click on any blue text in the list on the left to view related facts in the table.

Below that is a list of datasets which include data for that area. Click on the theme you’re interested in on the left and datasets within that theme are listed alphabetically on the right.

Clicking on a dataset will take you to a dataset page.

In Atlas, the Locations section below that provides the interactive map of the area you’ve searched for (in this case the default, entire country of Scotland). Here you can see all the areas and organisations within that area by clicking on the blue text on the left.

When you select an area type from here you are taken to a list of those areas. As an example I select Scottish Parliamentary Constituencies. I get a partially expanded alphabetical list of my options.

To view constituencies not yet expanded, click on the dots by the letter they start with. When you’ve selected the area you want to view, you get to a new Atlas page for that area where you can view the key facts for that area, a list of datasets which contain data for that area and locations within it. As an example, this is the page for Galloway and West Dumfries parliamentary constituency.

At the foot of the Atlas page you can add areas available in the location section of your view to the Data Cart.

To continue exploring our data, go to statistics.gov.scot