Data that drives investigations forward

A growing number of editorial inquiries shows how essential reliable data has become for well-founded reporting. To enable journalists to work efficiently and independently, we provide comprehensive datasets, code modules, and analytical tools. Our data resources are designed to ensure transparency, traceability, and reproducibility at all times, thereby strengthening the quality of data-driven investigations.

Our dashboards

For a quick introduction to selected datasets, we also provide dashboards. Currently, dashboards are available for the following topics:

Eigene Erreichbarkeits-Szenarien berechnen

Population scenarios from the UN and the Wittgenstein Centre

Dashboard on the hospital reform in North Rhine-Westphalia, including all hospitals and service groups

Current gas storage levels in Germany and Europe

SMC data collection on GitHub

Our GitHub data collection provides datasets, example code, and information on sources and licenses.

GitHub Datensammlung

Data analyses in the healthcare system

Hospital list and quality reports

Data investigations in the field of hospital care in Germany often require the same core datasets: a complete list of all hospitals in Germany and information from their quality reports. Preparing these data is time-consuming. For the hospital list from the Institute for the Hospital Remuneration System (InEK) and the hospitals’ quality reports, we provide code that allows the data to be imported easily. The code base is intended to be maintained as a collaborative project so that newsrooms can share their extended datasets with the community. The code for the datasets on hospitals in Germany is available in a repository on GitHub.

Hospital accessibility analyses

How accessible is the nearest stroke unit? What changes with the hospital reform in North Rhine-Westphalia? How many additional minutes do residents need to travel on average if their local hospital closes? Accessibility plays an important role in the healthcare provision of the population. For our analyses, we maintain a large dataset containing travel times from all inhabited 100-by-100-meter grid cells to nearby hospitals. We provide this dataset to interested journalists on request and offer methodological guidance for evaluation.

Code for data reports and R package

Our data reports always include a link to the document containing the underlying code. With the database, any report can be recalculated—for example, using new data or different parameters.

To recalculate our reports, the R package SMChelpR is required. It provides functions for easy access to our database and for generating our graphics.

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