The Edmonton Food Council was pleased to participate in the Alberta Open Data Summit on October 14, 2016 held at the Stanley Milner Library. Creating an annual survey is one of the Council’s mandates and will help us understand how Edmontonians access, understand and participate in the local food system. With the data we obtain from these surveys, we’ll be able to work on other projects and policies addressing the issues and needs of the community.

Sara Awatta, a University of Alberta student, worked together with U of A professor (and Food Council alumni) Dr. Brent Swallow, to interpret the data and to produce an analysis which compared the results of the survey with other geographic data relating to demographics and food security. She created a great presentation of her analysis that you can view here.

The Edmonton Food Council is actively investigating the sharing of survey results through the City of Edmonton’s Open Data Catalogue. Stay tuned for further news on this effort and for ongoing updates about how the data is being used to analyze food issues in Edmonton.

Developing the survey was a valuable experience for the Council and has given us a lot of perspective that we’ll take into the next one we create. That will be sent out in early 2017; in the meantime, we’ll be adding some focused food-related questions into the City of Edmonton’s Insight surveys – to sign up for those, click here.