This tutorial demonstrates how to merge data cubes using linked data frames.

For brevity the code used to construct the input cubes is hidden. You can read the details in the source code for this vignette on github.

library(ldf)
library(knitr)
library(magrittr)
library(dplyr)
library(vctrs)


There are a several ways to combine data cubes:

• concatenating rows to gather observations from different cubes into a single collection
• using correspondence lookups to translate dimension values from one codelist into another
• joining cubes by dimension and code URIs to add more rows or columns as required

We’ll explore each in turn.

# Concatenating rows of observations

You can concatenate observations by “row binding” tables - adding rows from one table onto the end of another making a single, longer table.

This is simple if the cubes have the same components. This basically means that tables need to have the same set of columns.

## Rows with matching columns

The following two excerpts from population datasets on linked.nisra.gov.uk have the same structure.

One is for Local Government Districts:

kable(pop_by_lgd)

area gender age population
N09000001 All Persons 0 1629
N09000001 All Persons 1 1672
N09000001 All Persons 2 1710
N09000001 All Persons 3 1861
N09000001 All Persons 4 1816
N09000001 All Persons 5 1845
N09000001 All Persons 6 1907
N09000001 All Persons 7 2006
N09000001 All Persons 8 1988
N09000001 All Persons 9 2004

The other for Parliamentary Constituencies:

kable(pop_by_pc)

area gender age population
N06000001 All Persons 0 1141
N06000001 All Persons 1 1163
N06000001 All Persons 2 1170
N06000001 All Persons 3 1159
N06000001 All Persons 4 1150
N06000001 All Persons 5 1205
N06000001 All Persons 6 1135
N06000001 All Persons 7 1186
N06000001 All Persons 8 1233
N06000001 All Persons 9 1153

These cubes are essentially the same, it’s just the there are different types of geography in the area column. Because the URIs for the two geography types can’t overlap (they’re Unique Resource Identifiers after all), we can concatenate the rows into a single table.

We need to use vctrs::vec_rbind() instead of base::rbind() because this makes sure the resource descriptions are merged:

vec_rbind(pop_by_lgd, pop_by_pc) %>% kable()

area gender age population
N09000001 All Persons 0 1629
N09000001 All Persons 1 1672
N09000001 All Persons 2 1710
N09000001 All Persons 3 1861
N09000001 All Persons 4 1816
N09000001 All Persons 5 1845
N09000001 All Persons 6 1907
N09000001 All Persons 7 2006
N09000001 All Persons 8 1988
N09000001 All Persons 9 2004
N06000001 All Persons 0 1141
N06000001 All Persons 1 1163
N06000001 All Persons 2 1170
N06000001 All Persons 3 1159
N06000001 All Persons 4 1150
N06000001 All Persons 5 1205
N06000001 All Persons 6 1135
N06000001 All Persons 7 1186
N06000001 All Persons 8 1233
N06000001 All Persons 9 1153

## Rows with different columns

If the cubes have different structures we will need to alter the tables of observations so that they have the same columns. We can remove spare columns if we first filter the rows such that there’s only a single value for that column. We can add missing columns by filling in values with a default.

These two excerpts from the Journey times to key services datasets demonstrate the problem.

These are the journey times from each neighbourhood to the town centre:

kable(jt_town)

area mode date travel_time unit
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 22.72201 Minutes
E01000001 Cycle 2017 13.94595 Minutes
E01000001 Car 2017 14.58818 Minutes

The employment centres table by contrast has one extra column: employment_centre_size. This breakdown wasn’t applicable to town centres but it’s important to distinguish employment centres.

kable(jt_employment)

area employment_centre_size mode date travel_time unit
E01000001 Employment centre with 100 to 499 jobs PT/walk 2017 20 Minutes
E01000001 Employment centre with 100 to 499 jobs Cycle 2017 12 Minutes
E01000001 Employment centre with 100 to 499 jobs Car 2017 13 Minutes
E01000001 Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs PT/walk 2017 4 Minutes
E01000001 Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs Cycle 2017 7 Minutes
E01000001 Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs Car 2017 7 Minutes

We could choose to ignore it, picking a single value from the breakdown. In some cases the codelist will be hierarchical, having e.g. a value for “Any” or “Total” at the top of the tree. This effectively ignores the breakdown 1. In this case that’s not possible so we’ll have to pick an employment centre size.

Let’s take moderately-sized employment centres. Once we’ve filtered to those rows, we can remove the redundant column:

jt_employment_500 <-
filter(jt_employment,
label(employment_centre_size)=="Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs") %>%
select(!employment_centre_size)

kable(jt_employment_500)

area mode date travel_time unit
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 4 Minutes
E01000001 Cycle 2017 7 Minutes
E01000001 Car 2017 7 Minutes

We can then concatenate this with jt_town. If we do this now, however, there won’t be a way to distinguish between the rows that come from each dataset. The destination of the service being travelled to is defined only in metadata (i.e. by the dataset’s title) and isn’t available in the data to let the observations distinguish themselves 2. We need to add this column in ourselves:

jt_town <- mutate(jt_town,
destination="Town Centre")
jt_employment_500 <- mutate(jt_employment_500,
destination="Employment Centre (500-4999 jobs)")

vec_rbind(jt_town, jt_employment_500) %>% kable()

area mode date travel_time unit destination
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 22.72201 Minutes Town Centre
E01000001 Cycle 2017 13.94595 Minutes Town Centre
E01000001 Car 2017 14.58818 Minutes Town Centre
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 4.00000 Minutes Employment Centre (500-4999 jobs)
E01000001 Cycle 2017 7.00000 Minutes Employment Centre (500-4999 jobs)
E01000001 Car 2017 7.00000 Minutes Employment Centre (500-4999 jobs)

Alternatively we can add the column to jt_town. Indeed vctrs::vec_rbind() will automatically set this to NA for us:

jt_employment <- mutate(jt_employment, destination="Employment Centre")

vec_rbind(jt_town, jt_employment) %>% kable()

area mode date travel_time unit destination employment_centre_size
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 22.72201 Minutes Town Centre NA
E01000001 Cycle 2017 13.94595 Minutes Town Centre NA
E01000001 Car 2017 14.58818 Minutes Town Centre NA
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 20.00000 Minutes Employment Centre Employment centre with 100 to 499 jobs
E01000001 Cycle 2017 12.00000 Minutes Employment Centre Employment centre with 100 to 499 jobs
E01000001 Car 2017 13.00000 Minutes Employment Centre Employment centre with 100 to 499 jobs
E01000001 PT/walk 2017 4.00000 Minutes Employment Centre Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs
E01000001 Cycle 2017 7.00000 Minutes Employment Centre Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs
E01000001 Car 2017 7.00000 Minutes Employment Centre Employment centre with 500 to 4999 jobs

# Using correspondence lookups

The components ought to have compatible values too. We can mix codes from different codelists (skos:Concept URIs from different skos:ConceptSchemes) in the same column, but it is generally nicer to work with a common set.

This is particularly true if the scope of the codelists overlaps. If you can derive a single codelist with a set of mutually exclusive and comprehensively exhaustive codes, then it’s possible to aggregate the values without double-counting or gaps.

We can use correspondence tables to lookup equivalent values from one codelist in another.

# example with correspondence table
# Map SITC to CPA at highest level?


# Join cubes by dimension and code URIs

If two cubes use the same codelist (or have dimensions with common patterns for URIs like intervals or geographies) then it’s possible to join them on that basis.

If every dimension is common to both cube codes (or if it only a single value), then it’s possible to do a full join using all the dimensions. This will result in a combined cube with the same set of dimensions (which uniquely identify the rows) and two values - one from each of the original cubes.

If these values are distinguished by dimension values, then they will be on different rows. Otherwise, the values could be put into different columns on the same rows. It’s possible to transform the data between these two representations using the tidyr package as described in the Tabulating DataCubes vignette. The longer (row bound) form is nicer for analysis (e.g. modelling or charting) whereas the wider (column bound) form is nicer for calculations that compare the values (e.g. denomination).

We’ll use two tables from Eurostat for this example. The first describes the total number of people employed in each country (in thousands):

kable(head(employment,3))

country employment
Austria 4148
Belgium 4708
Bulgaria 3121

The second describes the economically active population of each country (in thousands):

kable(head(population,3))

country population
Austria 4336
Belgium 4969
Bulgaria 3258

Both have a country dimension that uses the same codes. We can use them together to calculate the employment rate.

If we combine them by column-binding we create a single, wider table 3.

emp_pop_wide <- dplyr::inner_join(employment, population, by="country")


country employment population
Austria 4148 4336
Belgium 4708 4969
Bulgaria 3121 3258
Switzerland 4321 4515
Cyprus 400 431
Czechia 5126 5230

This form is convenient where we want to address the two variables with metadata.

For example, we can calculate the employment rate by referring to each variable:

emp_pop_wide %>%
mutate(employment_rate = employment / population) %>%
arrange(-employment_rate) %>%
kable()

country employment population employment_rate
Czechia 5126 5230 0.9801147
Netherlands 8077 8328 0.9698607
Germany (until 1990 former territory of the FRG) 39955 41234 0.9689819
Malta 245 253 0.9683794
Iceland 180 186 0.9677419

Alternatively, we can row-bind the tables to form a single, longer table. We have to add another dimension - variable - to the table to distinguish the rows from each source. This allows us to combine the employment and population measures into a single measure which simply counts people.

emp_pop_long <- rbind(
transmute(employment, country, indicator="Employment", people=employment),
transmute(population, country, indicator="Population", people=population)
)

emp_pop_long %>%
arrange(country) %>%
kable()

country indicator people
Austria Employment 4148
Austria Population 4336
Belgium Employment 4708
Belgium Population 4969
Bulgaria Employment 3121
Bulgaria Population 3258
Switzerland Employment 4321
Switzerland Population 4515
Cyprus Employment 400
Cyprus Population 431

This form is convenient where we want to address the two variables as data.

For example, we can plot employment against population:

library(ggplot2)

ggplot(filter(emp_pop_long, !country %in% c("EU27_2020","EU28","EU15","EA19")),
aes(label(country), people, fill=indicator)) +
geom_col(position="dodge") +
scale_fill_brewer() +
theme_minimal() +
coord_flip() +
labs(title="Demographics of European Countries",
x="Country",
y="Count of People (Thousands)",
fill="Indicator")


1. We’re not really “ignoring” the breakdown, so much as marginalising it by taking a value which effectively represents the integral over that dimension. In the case of counts, for example, this will be a sum. Picking an arbitrary value from the dimension would conditionalise the distribution upon it. Either way we’re removing a dimension from the cube.↩︎

2. Of course the observation URIs would still be distinct, but we didn’t return those from the query so they aren’t in the table. We could instead have had the query bind a dataset variable for the qb:dataSet property in each case (yielding each dataset’s URI), but doing it explicitly like this is hopefully more instructive.↩︎

3. We use dplyr::inner_join() instead of base::merge() because this will ensure the resource descriptions also get joined (dplyr uses vctrs underneath). Merge will only retain the description of the left-hand data frame so it’s safe to use merge(all=F) for inner-joins. For right- or full-joins you’ll need to use dplyr instead of (or rebuild the description yourself with e.g. merge_description()).↩︎