In June, preliminary results from the 2022 Census were published by the Central Statistics Office. These results included extensive data on vacancy – a particularly hot topic, considering that on Census night, there were over 166,000 homes sitting dormant in Ireland (or more houses than in all of County Galway).

Rudi O’Reilly Meehan, a freelance data scientist and data visualisation expert, decided to dig deeper into the results, spending weeks manipulating, interrogating and wrangling the data. The result of those menacing-sounding data operations is Dormant, an interactive piece which brings the dense, static data to life for the public and formed part of the Housing Unlocked exhibition.

The exhibition has closed, but you can continue to explore the housing and vacancy data through the online version of Dormant.

Ever wondered what “data cleaning” actually means? Or how to pick apart datasets to find interesting stories? Then how to combine narrative and visuals to tell these stories effectively?

Watch the recording of Visualising Vacancy, Rudi’s Housing Unlocked talk on the process behind creating Dormant, to learn the answers to these questions!