Sandpit: Building Relationships with the 'Invisible' in the Digital (Global) Economy - BRIDGE

Lead Research Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Economics

Abstract

Access to products, services and government is increasingly reliant on people being able to use information and communications technologies: from computers to mobile phones. Whilst there are many obvious benefits to those already familiar with the technology, those that do not have the skills or inclination to interact through such technology can get excluded and this may eventually lead to a permanent disadvantage. These groups within society can be very large according to the UK government, with 70% of over 65s reported as never having used the Internet (www.statistics.gov.uk, 2008).As companies grow in scale and design products and services for global rather than local markets it becomes harder to track these partially excluded groups. This is reported as a growing 'psychic distance' between the designers of technologies and the prospective users of those technologies, with a risk that those excluded from the market today will become effectively invisible to designers of future products. Such users' requirements of technology no longer inform the design process and create a digital divide that is socially constructed rather than economically constrained. This is neither good for society nor business, where such exclusion may alienate, as well as prevent business from identifying and engaging with latent demand for their products and services.This project aims to build a 'Bridge' from the needs of technologically excluded users to the capabilities of suppliers of products and services. This will be achieved through exploration of users' expectations, desires and needs and by building design guidelines to help address them. The project will extrapolate the results of this work to wider markets.In order to realise these goals, a combination is needed of qualitative research methods to deliver a detailed picture of user needs, and quantitative methods to map that to the data that large global corporations would typically hold about their current customers and markets.User needs identified through qualitative methods need to be related to behavioural characteristics observed through data analysis and modelling of demand within global markets. This element of the project builds on direct engagement with industry, both with designers, and their existing customers, as well as the organisational processes and data that relate one to the other and informs the designer's view of their users.Through direct engagement with users, designers and producers, BRIDGE will contribute to the design of new products, services and interfaces. As design improves and becomes more socially inclusive, better and more sustainable relationships can be established with consumers. This knowledge can be used to identify opportunities for expansion within global markets for UK industry and hence has the potential to benefit individuals, society and the economy overall.
 
Description This research makes a contribution in two ways:

(i) Method: we established an infrastructure for a 'Big Data' approach to collaborative analysis of commercial socio-economic data within China. This has been achieved through an international collaboration with a leading High Performance Computing Centre (EPCC) and access to the Trans-Eurasia Information Network - the first large-scale research and education network for the Asia Pacific.

(ii) New observations: This research attempts to resolve both large-scale and small-scale understanding of the adoption of new technologies.

At a small scale we have performed detailed studies of older adults in the UK, focussing on learning to use new technologies, such as tablet computers, that enable and deliver benefits from participation in the Digital Economy. This work exemplified the powerful role that facilitating conditions have for learning to use digital technologies for this user group.

At a much larger scale, we have collaborated with a company in China to give access to records of consumption for a customer base that exceeds the population of the UK. We have built a large set of models to describe and predict consumer behaviour within this Chinese market. Using Big Data methods developed in (i) we discovered a new demographic in China: 'Distance from Home' that we found to be more predictive of technology adoption and use than any traditional demographic.

These observations are relevant to policy development within China given current migration of 250 million people from rural to urban settings, creating the 'New Urban Chinese' as a distinctive segment for whom issues of digital equality have to be addressed.

The findings are also relevant to industry seeking a better understanding of how to create new products and services for the rapidly evolving markets within China.
Exploitation Route The development of a method for digital economy interactions with China, and hence academic research that respects the data sovereignty of Chinese business, may be applied by a wide range of UK researchers.

The new observations relating to the modelling and prediction of technology adoption in China are relevant to further studies of 'digital inequalities' in China, and commercial studies seeking to address emergent inequalities with new products and services.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Retail
 
Description Developing a global-scale ICT infrastructure with China for the collaborative analysis of consumer data provides a 'how to' for overcoming the socio-legal barriers to participation in the network economy. It also provides insights into behaviour at a scale and across a geography that this project has made possible to observe for the first time. From a practitioner perspective, the results of analysing the behaviour of Chinese consumers across the cities of China has allowed the behaviour of circular migrants to be distinguished for the first time, identified a new demographic marker, and hence produced new market segmentation criteria. This research has generated further project proposals, from examining behaviour in the Chinese Over The Counter medicine market, which is particularly important in addressing stresses caused by rural-urban migration in China, to a proposal to use the lessons learned in building a global secure infrastructure and apply them to global networking of carbon markets. Such networking would improve the efficiency with which society manages interventions to meet the aspirations of the Paris Agreement, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance (2020).
First Year Of Impact 2013
Sector Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
Impact Types Economic,Policy & public services
 
Description Big Data in China: An approach for the Publishing Industry 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited talk to Jiagxi Publishing Group 17 Aug 2015, St Catherine's College, University of Oxford, 17 August 2015.
[Note. The Jiangxi Publishing Group is a large state-owned publishing and media group that was founded in 1993, owns more than 130 subsidiaries and has over 10,000 employees.]
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Big Data in China: Modelling migrant behaviour 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Invited talk to the China National Bureau of Statistics, 29 October 2015, Castle Suite, Jury's Inn, Edinburgh.
[Note. The China National Bureau of Statistics is the government body that collects and publishes statistics related to the economy, population and society of the People's Republic of China at national and local levels.]
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2015
 
Description Big Data in China: building data resources and international collaborations to model and predict population behaviour 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited talk to the National Development and Reform Commission State Information Centre (NDRC-SIC), 3 February 2016, Business School, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
[Note. The NDRC-SIC is national think tank that supports Chinese government in policy making and supports Chinese government in data analysis related to social and economic activities.]
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2016
 
Description Edinburgh 1st Pilot Workshop on Measuring and Mitigating Digital Social Exclusion/inclusion 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact This inaugural workshop is an interdisciplinary engagement that brings together researchers, experts, policy makers, and workers, to contribute to the topic and explore of digital labour in the 'gig' economy. The focus was on the way that emerging data-centric techniques can be used to develop our understanding of practices and conditions of work, inform debates on governance of exchange of mediated labour. The talk given by Lloyd focussed on the analytical methods and outputs associated with a 'Big Data' study of circular migrant workers in China, sampled from a dataset with a larger number of individual's consumption records than the UK's population. This study was funded by the grants associated with this record.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Information business growth and competitiveness in the Asia and Pacific region 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Workshop at ASIAN INTERNET ENGINEERING CONFERENCE (AINTEC) 2010, 15th-17th November 2010, Bangkok, Thailand. Sponsored by DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe)



http://www.tein3.net/server/show/conEvent.506

http://www.tein3.net/upload/pdf/TEIN_3_HRD_workshop-final.pdf
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2010
 
Description PERMISSIONED INNOVATION: BUILDING A DISTRIBUTED LEDGER INFRASTRUCTURE FOR GLOBAL CARBON MARKETS UNDER ARTICLE 6: Decentralised and distributed digital architecture - innovation and diffusion to build a workable, transparent and ambitious carbon market. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact COP23 Official Side Event organised by UK Department for International Trade
Date: 12 Nov 2017
Location: UK Pavilion
Title: PERMISSIONED INNOVATION: BUILDING A DISTRIBUTED LEDGER INFRASTRUCTURE FOR GLOBAL CARBON MARKETS UNDER ARTICLE 6: Decentralised and distributed digital architecture - innovation and diffusion to build a workable, transparent and ambitious carbon market.
Number of Attendees: 35
- at the event all members of the DLT4NCM team presented, with Lloyd focussing on the relationship between distributed ledger architecture and diffusion potential, applying socio-technical lessons learned from the funded research associated with this record that built a global grid facility connecting sites in three continents.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Talk: 'UK Compliance with the Aarhus Convention, Decision V/9n ACCC_C_2010_53' 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact At the 60th meeting of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (Geneva, 28 February - 3 March 2017), the Compliance Committee will hold an open session on the implementation of decision VI/8k of the Meeting of the Parties concerning the compliance of the United Kingdom.

Ashley Lloyd has been invited to address this session as an official communicant, who led an environmental case brought to the Aarhus Committee in which it was agreed that the UK (the 'Party concerned') had failed to meet its obligations under the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, the 'Aarhus Convention'. At this event the Committee will explain its procedure going forward with respect to its follow-up on decision VI/8k, including regarding the Party's first progress report due on 1 October 2018. The Committee will also hear from the Party concerned regarding any developments that have taken place since the sixth session of the Meeting of the Parties with respect to its implementation of decision VI/8k. At the time of writing it is not possible to report on these proceedings, but an update can be provided during the next researchfish reporting period. This work aligns with a current project application to develop the research-council funded work associated with this record to deliver a global networked carbon market infrastructure that helps improve the efficiency of mitigation measures and moves towards a single market price for carbon across the world.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/pp/compliance/CC-60/CC60_prov_timeline_26.02.2018.pdf
 
Description The United Nations system, Industry 4.0 and its potential for climate solutions 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact COP23 Official Side Event organised by UNIDO
Date: 12 Nov 2017
Location: Bonn Zone, Meeting Room 9
Title: The United Nations system, Industry 4.0 and its potential for climate solutions
Number of Attendees: 200

- the Distributed Ledger Technology for Networked Carbon Markets (DLT4NCM) team participated in a panel discussion, represented by Justin Macinante (with A D Lloyd, M. Hüwener, A. Jackson). Participation in this event is part of developing the research-council funded work to support a global networked carbon market infrastructure that helps improve the efficiency of mitigation measures and moves towards a single market price for carbon across the world. The audience was very broad and included representatives from both developed and developing economies, particularly the Small Island States who have quite specific barriers to the adoption of, and full participation in, global network infrastructure. This is an audience that it is important to reach, and working with UNIDO represents a significant opportunity to do so. Following this presentation we had discussions about a potential future project with the Green Climate Fund which we have followed up.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
 
Description Third academics@Google workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact One of the investigators (Lloyd) participated in the organisation, and co-Chaired the third 'academics@Google' workshop, having presented at Google Forum I and been involved in the organisation of all later workshops. At this event discussions took place with representative of the EPSRC, ESRC and the Technology Strategy Board that resulted in the RCUK/ESRC programme entitled 'Google Data Analytics Social Science Research'.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2012
 
Description Towards Sustainable Climate Change Response Measures under the Paris Agreement 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Joint Organiser and speaker at this official side event at 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference 23rd yearly session of the Conference of Parties (COP23). Participation reflected the progress made in the associated grants of building industry-grade, US DoD level secure global systems that integrated academic supercomputing facilities with commercial systems across political, legal and geographic boundaries, at a global scale.

This event is part of developing the above research-council funded work to support a global networked carbon market infrastructure that helps improve the efficiency of mitigation measures and moves towards a single market price for carbon across the world. This is a highly interdisciplinary project that requires competence in a number of key areas and in this workshop we focus on methods for evaluating NDCs' emission reduction efforts and assesses their economic costs. Whilst actual costs are shown to be higher than least-cost mitigation measures, on the other hand, these costs need to be compared with the beneficial effects of NDCs on Sustainable Development Goals. This optimisation is the subject of related presentations from different groups in the US, Italy and Japan, followed by a panel discussion about solutions to achieve technical innovation and societal objectives effectively.

Lloyd co-presented: "Permissioned Innovation: Building a Distributed Ledger Infrastructure for Networking Global Carbon Markets under Article 6" that outlined an innovative, practical and feasible model for moving from the aspirations of the Paris Agreement to the reality of mitigation outcomes being transferred internationally as envisaged by Article 6, paragraph 2. Reflecting the hybrid top-down rules/bottom-up pledge and review nature of the Paris Agreement, we bring together the high-level considerations of how to achieve technical innovation and societal objectives effectively, with the nuts-and-bolts, on the ground, 'how to do it' of making innovation a reality.

At this event, Lloyd was co-organiser, speaker and panel member, with three other members of the 'DLT4NCM' team participating as speakers and/or panel members: Justin Macinante, School of Law, The University of Edinburgh; Adrian Jackson (EPCC - National Supercomputing Centre, The University of Edinburgh) and Markus Hüwener (team member and market specialist, previously CEO of the world's first asset management company in the Climate Change sector).

Date: 15 Nov 2017 Location: COP23, Bonn, Turkey Pavilion
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2017
URL https://seors.unfccc.int/seors/reports/events_list.html?session_id=COP23