UB's knowledge network advances to version 2.0

According to the Regional Knowledge Network (RKN), more people die in Erie County from cirrhosis of the liver than motor vehicle-related deaths.

An informational Web site and online database, the RKN was developed by UB's Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth. It offers data, maps, lists and resources to ensure that the Buffalo-Niagara region has more readily accessible information on critical issues.

The site is also a great resource for those researching the area, according to Maxwell Ruckdeschel, data manager for the institute. Users can find data gathered in Western New York, Buffalo Niagara and Southern Ontario.

"Our interface is easier to use than searching multiple sites," Ruckdeschel said, "especially for first time users of the census site."

Supported by a $336,371 grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation received this past April, users can now find information from health-related topics to government, economy, education, environment and public safety issues.

The latest enhancements to the RKN are 79 data variables within the topic of Health and Human Services.

Information is gathered for the RKN by a group of graduate students working for UB's Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth. Their goal is simple: provide area citizens with more information on their environment.

"Students who have to research Western New York census topics can find all of that info here," Ruckdeschel said.

With the new Health and Human Services data, users can acquire information on several variables including disability, disease, mortality, health behaviors, child health, social needs and mental health.

"Health data is an important variable that people are interested in," Ruckdeschel said, "so that (researchers) can understand disease, and other human services and social needs throughout Western New York," Ruckdeschel said.

According to Ruckdeschel, the disability data has been most widely used thus far.

Community leaders, he said, are using the system as a way to evaluate other regions as well, "to see how different areas compare to each other."

Though recently enhanced, the site will continue to build with funding from The John R. Oishei Foundation up through May 2008. Expansion of the existing data variables as well as new information tools will be part of the construction to the site.

The RKN replaces the institute's former Western New York Regional Information Network, an online repository of lists and directories that launched in 1997 and grew steadily until 2005, when it was taken offline.

Currently the interface can be accessed at http://rkn.buffalo.edu, a Web site free and open to the public.