For Dashboard Week Day 3, DS56 will be tackling APIs in Alteryx, to build a comprehensive spatial overview of UK crime in Tableau.
The Brief
The group has access to the data.police APIs, and will specifically need to use the following APIs:
- Forces
- Neighbourhoods
- Neighbourhood boundary
- Crimes at location
Using the documentation provided at https://data.police.uk/docs/ DS56 will need to:
- Plan an API workflow: Plan and execute a multi-stage Alteryx workflow that navigates the police data API hierarchy.
- Construct Spatial boundaries: Use Alteryx to transform raw coordinates into Polygon shapefiles for every police force neighbourhood.
- Create an additional dataset of all crimes at these locations for March 2026.
- In Tableau, join the March 2026 crime point data with the neighbourhood boundaries to enable area-based analysis.
- Create a spatial dashboard that allows the user to explore crimes across the UK.
The key focus on the dashboard analysis is to move beyond simple plotting of dots on a map. Whilst it is up to DS56 to decide on the story they wish to explore using the police crime data, their dashboards must utilise some of the cool spatial features in Tableau.
These could include:
- Spatial Parameters
- Map layers
- Spatial functions such as BUFFER()
DS56 will present their dashboards, dashboard sketches, and workflows at 3.30pm this afternoon, followed by a blog post reflecting on their workflow architecture and using Spatial data in Alteryx and Tableau. Good luck DS56! 🌏🌎🌍