While most of us are sleeping night-shift workers are keeping our cities running. They work as healthcare professionals, emergency responders, public transport operators, cleaners, hospitality staff. And they’re the ones making sure our hospitals function, our streets are safe and that our essential services are available. They also play in important role in making sure the city is ready for the following day.
With Melbourne’s night economy continuing to grow it’s important that policies and structures are evolving to ensure the safety and wellbeing of night workers. To do this we need to better understand the unique needs of night workers so resources and services can be allocated to where they’re most needed during the night.
One such need is safe and reliable off-peak transport. To understand the travel needs of night shift workers we need to know where they work and live, although this seems like a simple question it can be challenging to find data on nighttime activity. The two main difficulties in understanding night work are classification and data availability.
In this month’s map Anna Edwards and Prof Michele Acuto looked at ABS data to see where nurses and midwives live and work across metropolitan Melbourne. They found there are more than 50,000 nurses and midwives working in Melbourne. A high proportion live in outer government areas like Casey, Wyndham and Whittlesea, but most of the jobs are in central areas like the Cities of Melbourne, Banyule and Monash.
While the data didn’t reveal how far individual nurses and midwives are travelling at night, the disparity in locations indicate these workers are potentially have to contend with long commutes and transport challenges.
Policymakers at all levels of government should be accounting for and creating policy that values night workers. Doing so creates a more supportive environment for these essential workers and helps Melbourne thrive as a vibrant 24-hour city. Read about this month’s map in more detail on Pursuit.
We’re so happy to be part of the Map of the Month initiative—a science communications project led by the University of Melbourne, in collaboration with AURIN, Melbourne Centre for Cities, Melbourne Data Analytics Platform, and Pursuit.
The goal of the project is to use maps as a tool to initiate important policy discussion within Metropolitan Melbourne. The maps and stories feature in the project are contributed by academics, community leaders, and government representatives from different areas of Melbourne. This month’s work was developed in collaboration with the Australian Research Council ‘Night Shift’ project, and the maps were produced by Kate Man-Hua Chu and Sayan Bachar. The project is made possible through the support of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and partnerships with the Victorian Office for Suburban Development and the Municipal Association of Victoria.