DEMO Data Hub Ghana
Give me a spin, I'm your Data Hub in action!
Designed as a dynamic spatiotemporal information system, the Data Hub framework supports data curation, harmonization, and collaboration across domains and data-driven use cases — modular in design, open source, and locally deployable. Tailored to the needs of Global Health teams, the platform integrates diverse data layers from the demo region of Ghana from 1901 up to 2025, including demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, meteorological, health, and infrastructure data. Availability, resolution, and timeliness of data vary according to the original data sources. Ghana was chosen as a demo region due to its long-standing partnership with the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, which maintains the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) in Kumasi.
Shapes
Ghana is a West African country bordered by Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and Côte d'Ivoire to the west, with a southern coastline along the Gulf of Guinea. The landscape transitions from coastal plains in the south through forested highlands in the center to northern savanna regions. Most of the population is concentrated in the southern half, particularly around the capital Accra on the coast and the inland commercial center of Kumasi.
The country is organized into administrative units, ranging from terrestrial plains to regions, districts and councils. The Data Hub currently holds shapes from the following types:
You can find an overview of all shapes in the Shapes section. From there, you can explore individual spatial units and access them either via API or as downloadable files for further analysis. The data originates from Ghana Statistical Services and was contributed by OCHA West and Central Africa via Humanitarian Data Exchange Platform (HDX), current as of before October 2021.
Data Layers
Data Layers are compiled from both user-contributed and open data sources, with some layers derived from the same source. To access Data Layers, you can browse the full catalog via the Data Layers overview, or use the Shapes or Location Picker to discover all available Data Layers for a specific spatial unit of interest.
Each Data Layer can be explored in-depth through a summary panel, see example Forest land cover. The panel features interactive map previews and temporal visualization that reveal spatial distributions and trends over time. It further includes detailed metadata, allowing you to examine data coverage, quality indicators, and key statistical attributes before proceeding with analysis. Data can be accessed either via API or as downloadable files.
Tools
In the Tools section, you'll find extensions built on the core Data Hub framework — for example, to enhance interaction with data layers or integrate analytical pipelines. It can also host data products such as dashboards or interactive maps. One example is the Location Picker, which links contextual data from spatial units to specific coordinates, for instance, to support event-based surveillance or early warning systems. We continuously develop new tools and share them here as open source extensions, where relevant to the community.
Docs
The Data Hub's Documentation section collects project-relevant overviews, including a Data Snack summary with key project details and important documentation on topics such as the Data Hub ecosystem, Shapefile history, Terms of use or the Data Hub Changelog. Project teams can maintain all sections as Markdown files in the connected project workspace, like GitHub.
Found our work useful?
If you used the Data Hub for data processing, metadata integration, or visualization in your work, please cite it as a contributing service using the following format:
Ströbele, J., & Boenecke, J. (2025). Data Hub (Version 0.9.5) [Computer software]. https://github.com/datasnack/datahub