Community Projects

The Data and Decision Sciences Lab is constantly working with local community partners on several data related projects that have a local and global impact.

Data is a critical resource that can have a positive impact on the functioning of a democracy by improving policy making, innovation, and government efficiency. However, raw data, when captured and stored in data silos, simply is not valuable unless it has been analyzed, evaluated, and acted upon. Interactive data visualization is a key tool to analyze data and see trends and patterns in the data. The Nebraska State Policy Initiative is a joint initiative of the Nebraska Legislature’s Planning Committee and the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s College of Public Affairs and Community Service. Researchers affiliated with the Center for Public Affairs Research use data to identify issues of growing concern for the Nebraska Legislature and present practical alternatives for consideration. The goal of this project was to build interactive visualization of demographics of selected economic characteristics of Nebraska in comparison to other states and the United States average using Tableau. This application is publicly available on the university official website and serve as a self-service tool for the user to have a better understanding and insight into trends and pattern in the economic characteristics of individual states in the U.S. and Nebraska in particular. The data being used was obtained from the Census Bureau 1 and Bureau of Economic Analysis 2, respectively.