Everything you ever wanted to know about Dublin in one site

Find out which Dublin car parks have spaces right now, how long your journey home will take, and how much of your garden you can cover in tarmac when you get there, at one web address – dublindashboard.ie.

The site, which has gone live this morning, is a repository for everything you could ever want to know about Dublin, using more 1,000 interactive maps and graphs.

Developed by the All-Island Research Observatory at Maynooth University in partnership with Dublin City Council, the site provides real-time information and up-to-date statistics about all aspects of the city, some of which is available at individual street level.

Users can select a street on a map and see what distance it is from the nearest school, hospital, transport services, Garda station and shops. They can find out what the air quality is like outside, or how noisy it is right now. They can see how many patients are on trolleys at the local hospital.

Links provide live travel information from Dublin Airport or Irish Rail or allow users to find out how many dublinbikes are available at their nearest bike station. They can see what the traffic is like to assess whether they should take the car or public transport to town. If they decide to drive, they can use a map to see the driving times to various car parks, and how many spaces are currently available.

Statistics are available for crime rates in Dublin for various offences, including theft, homicide, drugs offences, burglary and damage to property, and how these figures have changed every three months over the last 10 years.

Users can see how much each Dublin local authority spends on housing, roads or litter and compare them with the national average and see how Dublin ranks against other counties in terms of levels of crime, social deprivation, health, or transport connectivity. Dublin is also compared with European and international cities in term of its economic, environmental and social performance.

The dashboard links to mypp.ie a new site all about planning in Dublin which allows the user to click on a map and see what developments have been granted, refused or are currently in the planning process in any particular area.

It includes a 3D house that users can explore to find out what changes or developments to their property they can make and what might require planning permission. Clicking on the front garden will reveal how much of it can be covered with tarmac for parking (less than 50 per cent is the answer).

Dublin Dashboard is intended for use by the public, but also researchers, planners, policy makers and businesses. Professor Rob Kitchin, project principal investigator, said the aim of the site was to "empower people living and working in Dublin by providing them with easy to access intelligence about the city".

The data underpinning the website is drawn from a number of data providers including the council, Dublinked, Central Statistics Office, Eurostat, and government departments. The site also links to a variety of existing applications.

Dr Gavin McArdle, the lead developer for the Dashboard, said the site is based on a principle of openness. “We wanted to create an open platform where anyone can take the data we use and build their own apps, or to connect their own apps back into the site to add new functionality.”

“Our approach has sought to avoid re-inventing the wheel, so if a good app already exists we just link to that rather than creating our own version.”