Urban Big Data Centre
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Glasgow
Department Name: School of Social & Political Sciences
Abstract
The Urban Big Data Centre aims to promote innovative research methods and the use of big data to improve social, economic and environmental well-being in cities. Traditionally, quantitative urban analysis relied on data designed for research purposes: Census and social surveys, in particular. Their qualities are well understood and the skills needed for extracting knowledge from them widely shared by social researchers. With the arrival of the digital age, we produce an ever increasing volume of data as we go about our daily lives from physical sensors, business and public administrative systems, or social media platforms, for example. These data have the potential to provide valuable insights into urban life but there are many more challenges in extracting useful knowledge from them. Some are technical, arising from the volume and variety of data, and its less structured nature. Some are legal and ethical, concerning data ownership rights and individual privacy rights.
Above all, there are important social science issues in the use of big data. We need to shape the questions we ask of these data with an informed perspective on urban problems and contexts, and not have data drive the research. There is a need to ask questions about the data themselves and how they affect the resulting representations of urban life. And there is a need to examine the ways in which these data are taken up by policy makers and used in decision making.
UBDC is a research centre which brings together an outstanding multi-disciplinary team to address these complex and varied challenges. We are a unique combination of four capacities: social scientists with expertise from a range of disciplinary backgrounds relevant to urban studies; data scientists with expertise in programming, data management, information retrieval and spatial information systems, as well as in legal issues around big data use; a data infrastructure comprising a substantial data collection and secure data management and analysis systems; and an academic group with strong connections to policy, industry and civil society organisations developed over the course of phase one and wider work.
In the second phase, our objectives are to maximise the social and economic benefits of activities from phase one. We will do this in particular through partnerships with industrial and government stakeholders, working together to produce analyses which meet their needs as well as having wider application. We will continue to publish world-leading scientific papers across a range of disciplines. We will work to enhance data collections and develop new methods of analysis. We will conduct research to understand the quality of these new data, how well they represent or misrepresent particular aspects of life, and how they are and could be used by policy makers in practice. Lastly, we will build capacity for researchers and others to work with this kind of data in future.
Our work programme comprises four thematic work packages. One focuses on understanding the sustainability, equity and efficiency of urban transport systems and on evaluating the impacts on these of infrastructure investments. There is a particular focus on public transport accessibility as well as active travel and hence health outcomes. The second examines the changing residential structure of cities or patterns of spatial segregation, and their consequences for social equity, with a particular focus on the re-growth of private renting. The third studies how urban systems shape skills development and productivity and, in particular, how the combination of home and school environments combine to shape secondary educational attainment. The fourth explores how big data are being taken up by policy makers. It asks what the barriers are to more effective use of these data but also whether they distort the picture of needs which a public body may form.
Above all, there are important social science issues in the use of big data. We need to shape the questions we ask of these data with an informed perspective on urban problems and contexts, and not have data drive the research. There is a need to ask questions about the data themselves and how they affect the resulting representations of urban life. And there is a need to examine the ways in which these data are taken up by policy makers and used in decision making.
UBDC is a research centre which brings together an outstanding multi-disciplinary team to address these complex and varied challenges. We are a unique combination of four capacities: social scientists with expertise from a range of disciplinary backgrounds relevant to urban studies; data scientists with expertise in programming, data management, information retrieval and spatial information systems, as well as in legal issues around big data use; a data infrastructure comprising a substantial data collection and secure data management and analysis systems; and an academic group with strong connections to policy, industry and civil society organisations developed over the course of phase one and wider work.
In the second phase, our objectives are to maximise the social and economic benefits of activities from phase one. We will do this in particular through partnerships with industrial and government stakeholders, working together to produce analyses which meet their needs as well as having wider application. We will continue to publish world-leading scientific papers across a range of disciplines. We will work to enhance data collections and develop new methods of analysis. We will conduct research to understand the quality of these new data, how well they represent or misrepresent particular aspects of life, and how they are and could be used by policy makers in practice. Lastly, we will build capacity for researchers and others to work with this kind of data in future.
Our work programme comprises four thematic work packages. One focuses on understanding the sustainability, equity and efficiency of urban transport systems and on evaluating the impacts on these of infrastructure investments. There is a particular focus on public transport accessibility as well as active travel and hence health outcomes. The second examines the changing residential structure of cities or patterns of spatial segregation, and their consequences for social equity, with a particular focus on the re-growth of private renting. The third studies how urban systems shape skills development and productivity and, in particular, how the combination of home and school environments combine to shape secondary educational attainment. The fourth explores how big data are being taken up by policy makers. It asks what the barriers are to more effective use of these data but also whether they distort the picture of needs which a public body may form.
Planned Impact
In line with our overall aim, we will work to maximise impacts from our research, new datasets we produce and the development of novel methods or new applications of existing ones. In doing so, we will demonstrate the value of big data and urban analytics. The intended beneficiaries continue to be extremely diverse (businesses, small and large; government/public bodies; and civil society), both national and international. For phase two, we concentrate our efforts on industrial and public sectors, as outlined below.
Industrial impact
In phase one, UBDC supported or collaborated with 33 private companies working in information management, mobility and transport, housing and geospatial data infrastructure, among others. Our next phase involves a number of new and continuing collaborations as noted in the Work Packages (WP), with potential benefits for those firms but also for the wider markets in which they operate.
In WP1, for example, our analysis of rail data will be of direct benefit to our industrial partner as new knowledge aims to support their activities to increase ridership. The knowledge and methods we develop will be relevant across the industry as well as being of value to public bodies such as rail regulators and transport planners more generally. Our efforts to understand cycling behaviour in response to infrastructure investment will benefit the growing bike sharing industry, as well as public bodies responsible for infrastructure investment and agencies with a remit for promotion of active travel.
In WP2, we are working with two property listings firms to better understand the qualities of their data and enrich them through integration with other sources. These engagements offer direct benefits to them in terms of the value of their data assets. Our results will benefit the wider private renting industry (landlords and agents) through a better understanding of this emerging, dynamic sector. Research in partnership with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) will shed light on the impacts of recent regulatory changes, enabling market actors to take a more informed position in relation to these.
Impact for government and public bodies
In phase one, UBDC worked with 17 government and public bodies at UK, devolved, regional and local tiers. We sought to produce positive impacts in specific policy domains (housing and planning, transport, health and social care, education) and we engaged at a more strategic level to support efforts by city governments in the UK and internationally to develop urban analytics initiatives. We will extend this strategy in phase two.
In discussing industrial impact, we have already identified a number of areas where we will seek parallel impacts on public policy. In WP3, we will produce new knowledge on the gaps in educational attainment from school and neighbourhood, with widespread application within educational policy at national and local levels. We will cast new light on the relatively neglected area of educational careers within FE and the extent to which these contribute to filling regional skills gaps in key sectors such as engineering and construction.
In WP4, we will provide new understanding of how online reporting tools represent (or misrepresent) citizens' needs to public bodies. This knowledge has very widespread application in enabling local authorities and other public bodies to use such tools in ways which support fairer and more efficient distribution of resources, rather than undermining them. Other work in this stream will support efforts to make urban big data more useable and useful by enhancing data standards, continuing work from phase one.
At the strategic level, we will work with Glasgow and Edinburgh City Deals to help them identify how big data and urban analytics can inform the monitoring and evaluation of their major investment programmes, with potential wider value for other City Deals and urban authorities more generally.
Industrial impact
In phase one, UBDC supported or collaborated with 33 private companies working in information management, mobility and transport, housing and geospatial data infrastructure, among others. Our next phase involves a number of new and continuing collaborations as noted in the Work Packages (WP), with potential benefits for those firms but also for the wider markets in which they operate.
In WP1, for example, our analysis of rail data will be of direct benefit to our industrial partner as new knowledge aims to support their activities to increase ridership. The knowledge and methods we develop will be relevant across the industry as well as being of value to public bodies such as rail regulators and transport planners more generally. Our efforts to understand cycling behaviour in response to infrastructure investment will benefit the growing bike sharing industry, as well as public bodies responsible for infrastructure investment and agencies with a remit for promotion of active travel.
In WP2, we are working with two property listings firms to better understand the qualities of their data and enrich them through integration with other sources. These engagements offer direct benefits to them in terms of the value of their data assets. Our results will benefit the wider private renting industry (landlords and agents) through a better understanding of this emerging, dynamic sector. Research in partnership with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) will shed light on the impacts of recent regulatory changes, enabling market actors to take a more informed position in relation to these.
Impact for government and public bodies
In phase one, UBDC worked with 17 government and public bodies at UK, devolved, regional and local tiers. We sought to produce positive impacts in specific policy domains (housing and planning, transport, health and social care, education) and we engaged at a more strategic level to support efforts by city governments in the UK and internationally to develop urban analytics initiatives. We will extend this strategy in phase two.
In discussing industrial impact, we have already identified a number of areas where we will seek parallel impacts on public policy. In WP3, we will produce new knowledge on the gaps in educational attainment from school and neighbourhood, with widespread application within educational policy at national and local levels. We will cast new light on the relatively neglected area of educational careers within FE and the extent to which these contribute to filling regional skills gaps in key sectors such as engineering and construction.
In WP4, we will provide new understanding of how online reporting tools represent (or misrepresent) citizens' needs to public bodies. This knowledge has very widespread application in enabling local authorities and other public bodies to use such tools in ways which support fairer and more efficient distribution of resources, rather than undermining them. Other work in this stream will support efforts to make urban big data more useable and useful by enhancing data standards, continuing work from phase one.
At the strategic level, we will work with Glasgow and Edinburgh City Deals to help them identify how big data and urban analytics can inform the monitoring and evaluation of their major investment programmes, with potential wider value for other City Deals and urban authorities more generally.
Organisations
- University of Glasgow, United Kingdom (Lead Research Organisation)
- Glasgow City Council, United Kingdom (Collaboration)
- Cycling Scotland (Collaboration)
- Code the City (Collaboration)
- Scottish Parliament (Collaboration)
- North Lanarkshire Council (Collaboration)
- CREATe (RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy) (Collaboration)
- NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) (Collaboration)
- British Council (Collaboration)
- The University of Seoul (Collaboration)
- Uber Technologies Inc. (Collaboration)
- Strava, Inc (Collaboration)
- United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Collaboration)
- Norwegian School of Economics (Collaboration)
- Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Collaboration)
- The Data Lab - Innovation Centre (Collaboration)
- Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (Collaboration)
- Medical Research Council (Collaboration)
- Glasgow Caledonian University, United Kingdom (Collaboration)
- Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (Collaboration)
- Sustrans, United Kingdom (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- British Standards Institution BSI, United Kingdom (Collaboration)
- Improvement Service, United Kingdom (Collaboration)
- Institute of Transport Economics (TOI) (Collaboration)
- Glasgow Centre for Population Health, United Kingdom (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) (Collaboration)
- STRAVA METRO (Project Partner)
- The Scottish Government, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- Office for National Statistics, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- CITYLETS (Project Partner)
- Hometrack Data Systems Ltd (Project Partner)
- Peter Brett Associates, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- George Hazel Consultancy (Project Partner)
- Austin-Smith & Lord (Project Partner)
- Abellio Group (Project Partner)
- Urban Tide (Project Partner)
- University of East London, United Kingdom (Project Partner)
- The Scottish Government (Project Partner)
Publications

Ampountolas K
(2020)
Motorway Tidal Flow Lane Control
in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems

Anejionu O
(2019)
Spatial urban data system: A cloud-enabled big data infrastructure for social and economic urban analytics
in Future Generation Computer Systems

Anejionu OCD
(2019)
Great Britain transport, housing, and employment access datasets for small-area urban area analytics.
in Data in brief

Bailey N
(2020)
Measuring Poverty Efficiently Using Adaptive Deprivation Scales
in Social Indicators Research

Bailey N
(2019)
The welfare consequences of the suburbanisation of poverty in UK cities: air pollution and school quality
in Urban Development Issues

Bailey N
(2020)
Poverty and the re-growth of private renting in the UK, 1994-2018.
in PloS one

Chen, L.
(2019)
Predicting Uber Demand in NYC with Wavenet

Fingleton B
(2019)
Estimating the local employment impacts of immigration: A dynamic spatial panel model
in Urban Studies

Harris R
(2020)
Visualising the scales of ethnic diversity in London using a multilevel entropy index
in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space
Description | The research centre has just finished its first year of operation. Some areas of work started under the earlier data service award and therefore have more mature outputs, other areas are relatively new and therefore have yet to produce significant findings. Key contributions lie in: the enhancement of knowledge about the validity of new forms of data and about rights to access; new knowledge from original analyses; and the development greater research capacity for work with new forms of data. A key challenge with new forms of data is around validity and in particular the issue of representativeness or bias from uneven coverage of the relevant population. This is particularly problematic with user-generated data and data from business systems where firms operate in competing markets. A key contribution of the centre has been to the validation of several major examples of new forms of data related to cycling (Livingston et al forthcoming) and housing (Livingston et al under review). Further work has provided a critique of other datasets, notably the most commonly used open source data on the activities of Airbnb (Wang et al under review) where we show the high sensitivity of findings to assumptions made in the analysis of that data. A second key challenge is around access, due to the private ownership of a large part of the data landscape. We are tackling this by working with CREATe to analyse the copyright law in relation to collecting on-line data for non-commercial research. This covers, for example, rights in relation to the collection of Airbnb data, social media data such as Twitter, or data from Google services such as Street View. This is an under-developed area of the law with few test cases so the joint review will be a significant contribution. In terms of substantive analysis, we have made several major contributions. We have shown how user-volunteerted data from the Strava app shed light on cycling behaviours and choices, and the impacts of infrastructure and weather on these. Our work shows the positive returns from cycling infrastructure investment through increased active travel, particularly for those who are less 'committed' cyclists (McArthur and Hong, 2019; Hong et al 2020; Hong et al 2019). Work on long-term rentals (private renting) has shown how the sector plays an increasing role in housing those in poverty (Bailey 2020) and its contribution to the suburbanisation of poverty in UK cities (Bailey et al under review). We have contributed novel methods for studying the city through the development of an integrated sensor and survey dataset. This enabled the development of Learning City metrics (Lido et al. 2018), and analysis of the links from financial literacy and numeracy to transport (Jin et al, Under Review) as well as adult learning engagement (Lido et al. 2016). We have contributed to the enhancement of research capacity through MSc and PhD programmes, as well as through staff training and development. Former staff and PhDs have moved on to new academic positions in the UK, US, New Zealand and China. |
Exploitation Route | We envisage taking these findings through to impact in numerous ways, each reflecting the specifics of the topic. Substantive findings will be disseminated through publications for non-academic audiences, KE events and participation in relevant policy fora or consultative exercises, as well as direct engagement with key stakeholders. In relation to the work on private renting for example, we have produced blogs and attended consultative events organised by Scottish Government, as well as continuing our engagement with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre through a joint PhD. We have also made connections with other significant public and private sector stakeholders. Findings about the value and limitations of new forms of data are similarly disseminated in multiple ways including through direct engagement with key stakeholders, as identified in the narrative impact section. |
Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Transport,Other |
URL | https://www.ubdc.ac.uk/research/research-projects/ |
Description | Research centre activities are in a relatively early stage after just one year although some areas of work benefit from continuity with the first phase of the Centre as a national data service. The last year has seen the deepening of key partnerships with a number of public and private sector organisations and these are likely to play a central role in future impact case studies. We can also show how our work is helping to make government more 'data aware', encouraging the development of policies and practices which will ensure better access to new forms of data more generally in future. Impact through research Over the past year, our relationship with Glasgow City Council has progressed enormously. The relationship is most concretely demonstrated in our work on adapting open source object detection tools for analysis of CCTV image data. We have signed an MoU with the council around this work and commenced a pilot which is progressing well. The approach developed here has potentially wide application but the immediate priority is to assist in the evaluation of major, on-going public realm investments (the Avenues project). Another local authority we have been working closely with is North Lanarkshire, helping the authority to understand the impacts of the move to online reporting tools for service requests. We have a particular focus on the social/spatial and gender distribution of services which results. As with the CCTV work, there is great potential for working with a much larger number of authorities in due course but we already have clear evidence of how our analysis informs the work of this authority. We have also been advising private organisations with a data business on their products and services. We have an Impact Acceleration Award to work with Strava in helping them develop a revised data product which balances the need to ensure individual privacy is safeguarded against the analytical value of the data. This work is on-going but is expected to lead to direct changes in Strava' data products this year. In our work on private renting, we have collaborated closely with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) producing joint outputs in 2019. We have continued close engagement with them and Scottish Government analysts in debates about reforms to private renting and to the short-term rental market, making invited contributions to various stakeholder events and written responses to parliamentary enquiries. We have made inputs to discussions around both policy and research, with our recommendations on better stewardship of data from regulatory activities finding political support. Impacts on policies and practices for data stewardship and access There have been many high-level statements of political support for better use of data in government and public policy making but the reality has often lagged some way behind. Too often, we see missed opportunities to make valuable data accessible to government and to researchers. This is an area where UBDC can play a significant strategic role by helping policy makers in diverse areas recognise the problem and commit to 'building the digital commons'. We have made inputs to many processes concerned with data availability, making the case not just for opening up data already held by public bodies but for government to be more aware of the opportunities to ensure that systems and processes run by or regulated by government capture data in ways which maximise its value for analysis, not just administration. At this stage, we can point to a number of areas where our work is influencing data policies. To give three contrasting examples. 1. A completed UBDC PhD (cofounded by Scottish Government) produced an outstanding thesis exploiting a unique database of linked health and social care records for one million Scots over 65 (Henderson 2020). In addition to the substantive findings, we produced papers examining the quality and completeness of the data (Henderson et al 2018; Henderson et al 2019). The PhD and papers have been cited by the UK's Office for Statistics Regulation in its review of adult social care statistics for Scotland, and the student was invited to write a blog for them on the topic. 2. McHugh presented at an event organised by Registers of Scotland, the body which maintains the record of housing and other land transactions here. He made the case for RoS to provide free access to housing transactions data. RoS are now exploring the case for this in more detail, with McHugh advising. 3. In our work on the housing system, and on the PRS and short-term lets markets in particular, we have emphasised the importance of ensuring there is access to the better data and have argued that there are several missed opportunities in the current system. Our review of the data needed to evaluate Scottish Government reforms for SPICe made several recommendations here, a number of which have found political support. Training and capacity building The launch of our MSc in Urban Analytics in Sept 2019 has provided a new route to impact. Several have had links with external organisations through group projects, individual dissertations and placements. First graduates will enter the labour market this year. |
First Year Of Impact | 2019 |
Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Transport,Other |
Impact Types | Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
Description | Closed-Loop Data Science for Complex, Computationally- and Data-Intensive Analytics |
Amount | £3,055,465 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/R018634/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 05/2018 |
End | 04/2022 |
Description | ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (University of Glasgow) Strava Privacy Study |
Amount | £11,160 (GBP) |
Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 04/2019 |
End | 07/2020 |
Description | Social and Economic Implications of Transport Sharing and Automation |
Amount | £302,344 (GBP) |
Funding ID | ES/S001875/1 |
Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2018 |
End | 01/2021 |
Title | Automated API/Scraping based approach to AirBnB Data Collection |
Description | This is bespoke infrastructure that utilises publicly accessible APIs and, based on the Text and Data Mining Exception from UK and EU copyright law, collects online AirBnB listings data for the purposes of academic research. The platform itself (still in development) provides the means to specify a location of interest, managing call and traffic constraints associated with AirBnB's platform and providing a persistent datastore that can then be the basis for bespoke extracts and specific research enquiries. |
Type Of Material | Improvements to research infrastructure |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | The platform remains in development but already is providing a basis for data collection that will inform research into housing, neighbourhoods and the impact of the new sharing economy. Ultimately, although copyright law does not appear to permit us to share the collected data, we will release the code to facilitate others' data collection efforts in due course. |
Title | CCTV Automated Object Detection Data Output |
Description | An output of the ongoing collaboration with Glasgow City Council to utilise Glasgow's existing CCTV system as a ready made sensor network, this dataset comprises counts over time of particular object types (car, person, bicycle, motorcycle, bus and truck) at each of the pilot sites within the CCTV study. A further dataset records the outcomes of manual counts produced to provide ground truth data, used as the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the automated counts. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | The database already informs and will continue to inform the development of new work evaluating the impact of major capital investment currently ongoing within the City of Glasgow. The project is particularly in response to sparse pedestrian count data which is available for cities such as Glasgow. Those datasets that are available tend to be confined to specific locations (see Springboard data also acquired by UBDC) or prohibitively expensive (e.g. mobile phone / telcom data). This dataset, and underlying approach are intended to reveal insights across the whole city and not require investment in procuring, deploying and maintaining costly new sensor technologies. Discussions with Glasgow City Council are ongoing to enable the release of the dataset as open data. These are mature and there is considerable optimism that this will be achieved in the near future. |
Title | Machine learning approach to automatically identify and count objects from CCTV image data |
Description | This approach uses CNN techniques, building on the open COCO Tensor Flow automated object detection libraries to automate the identification of several types of objects from CCTV imagery acquired in collaboration with Glasgow City Council. Privacy assurances are maintained by ensuring that processing takes place only within the secure infrastructure operated and managed by the local authority, with only benign object count data leaving the secure physical and logical environment. |
Type Of Material | Computer model/algorithm |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | The approach is yielding data which as well as set to inform UBDC research agenda is also expected to be released as an open dataset, informing research from broader academic and other communities. Furthermore, we are hopeful that having demonstrated the potential of this approach (which uses downtime or redundancy within the existing CCTV system) we will be well positioned to deploy similar software within networks in other city settings. Key non-functional requirements are to minimise operational disruption, ensure privacy is maintained and to offer scalability and easy deployment. Each of these aspects been broadly successful to date, with further optimisation planned. |
URL | https://www.ubdc.ac.uk/news-media/2019/september/piloting-cctv-analysis-that-protects-individuals-pr... |
Title | North Lanarkshire Council Customer Relationship Management system |
Description | Database of requests for North Lanarkshire Council's Environmental Services and the council's response to these requests. 10 years of data. includes some sensitive data (names, addresses and telephone numbers of residents in North Lanarkshire). Shared by NLC under the terms of a data sharing agreement signed by both parties in October 2019. Securely stored on UBDC's secure server and only accessible by the named project team. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | intial output presented to NLC Audit and Scrutiny Panel |
Title | Registers of Scotland Open Data Product |
Description | UBDC's licensing agreement with Registers of Scotland permits us to produce produce statistical reports and publications using the data including, but not limited to, summaries of market activity (e.g. number of sales, average price) for a given period at Datazone level (subject to a minimum of five transactions per datazone level). This dataset is an excerpt that conforms to this specification, and can be made widely available without charge. It covers the period 2003 to January 2019. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
Impact | We have shared this with dataservice users and hope to continue to do so, complementing a fuller RoS data set that we also make available. We will continue to monitor usage of the data and associated impact. |
URL | http://ubdc.gla.ac.uk/dataset/registers-of-scotland-data |
Description | British Council Impact Study |
Organisation | British Council |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | This collaboration used UBDC schools achievement data, as well as open data and qualitative primary data, to explore the impact of British Council programmes in Scottish schools, particularly their contribution to closing the attainment gap for students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. British Council Scotland works with approximately a third of all schools in Scotland through programmes, including Erasmus+, Connecting Classrooms, e-Twinning, and Modern Language Assistants, that enrich curriculum, pedagogy and professional development. Details can be found in the published project report, and our work with BC in educational disadvantage and place continues. |
Collaborator Contribution | UBDC, and education researchers on the Educational Disadvantage and Place team, contributed in terms of data access, analysis, and interpretation, particularly to the quantitative arguments around British Council programme impact, available here: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/180725/ |
Impact | Livingston, K., Doherty, C., Lido, C., Cassar, R., Dunkley, R., Gale, T., & Parker, S. (2018). British Council school programmes in Scotland: An impact study. Final Report. Edinburgh: British Council. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | CREATe Collaboration Agreement |
Organisation | CREATe (RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | UBDC has agreed to commission from CREATe a publication aimed at Social Scientists to offer reassurances regarding the legal legitimacy of their online data collection activities. This follows several interactions between UBDC and CREATe staff regarding the Copyright Exception for Text and Data Mining which essentially permits academic researchers to harvest and collect publicly accessible online data for academic research purposes irrespective of contractual terms which appear to purport to prohibit such behaviour. |
Collaborator Contribution | CREATe colleagues have appointed a post-doctoral researcher to undertake the work and produce an accessible output articulating the legal situation with regards to web scraping, harvesting of online data and the acceptable parameters within which this can be undertaken for academic research purposes. |
Impact | This has the potential to be a highly impactful piece of work as it could be a means to overcome paralysis often associated with little formal understanding of legal risk associated with data. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Collaboration with Environmental Assets, North Lanarkshire Council |
Organisation | North Lanarkshire Council |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Provision of working papers for policy/practice development |
Collaborator Contribution | Provision of access to data via a data sharing agreement Advice on research questions relating to data and policy/practice Feedback on findings and analysis Bridge into relevant council committees to discuss findings Participation of staff in UBDC event Providing a presentation for UBDC event |
Impact | Two working papers, one of which was provided to Counciil's Audit and Scrutiny Committe Two presentations to Data fest event March 11th 2020 One blog on UBDC website |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Cycling Scotland Data Agreement |
Organisation | Cycling Scotland |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | UBDC has an agreement with Cycling Scotland to provide open access to their National Monitoring Framework dataset (2017 - 18) |
Collaborator Contribution | "Cycling Scotland is the nation's cycling organisation. Cycling Scotland helps create and deliver opportunities and an environment so anyone anywhere in Scotland can cycle easily and safely. This dataset comprises data about cycling counts in various streets within Scotland and includes manual traffic surveys with counts of various modes of transport." |
Impact | The data has been requested by a range of academic and policy audiences. To date 14 requests for these data have been received |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Future mobility |
Organisation | Institute of Transport Economics (Norway) |
Country | Norway |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | I have given a talk at an event arranged by the institute. I have also participated in a funding application. |
Collaborator Contribution | They have included UBDC in a funding application. |
Impact | I gave a talk at a workshop in Oslo organised by the institute. |
Start Year | 2017 |
Description | Glasgow City Council/ Glasgow Centre for Population Health Joint data sharing project |
Organisation | Glasgow Centre for Population Health |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We are working closely with Glasgow City council (GCC) on the development of a web portal for sharing data with ourselves and Glasgow Centre for Population Health We are providing expertise about data sets and the safe sharing of data. |
Collaborator Contribution | GCC are putting considerable resources into developing a safe open data portal. We are working with them to help with this development. As trusted partners with GCPH we will test the robustness and security of the site. In return we get access to many data sets which are key to the research we are involved in. This may also include co-created data that come from other collaborative projects we are involved in. |
Impact | There are no formal outcomes from this project yet. Though an early Beta version of the web portal has been created. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Glasgow City Council/ Glasgow Centre for Population Health Joint data sharing project |
Organisation | Glasgow City Council |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We are working closely with Glasgow City council (GCC) on the development of a web portal for sharing data with ourselves and Glasgow Centre for Population Health We are providing expertise about data sets and the safe sharing of data. |
Collaborator Contribution | GCC are putting considerable resources into developing a safe open data portal. We are working with them to help with this development. As trusted partners with GCPH we will test the robustness and security of the site. In return we get access to many data sets which are key to the research we are involved in. This may also include co-created data that come from other collaborative projects we are involved in. |
Impact | There are no formal outcomes from this project yet. Though an early Beta version of the web portal has been created. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Measuring activity on city streets, Joint project with Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Centre for Public Health |
Organisation | Glasgow Centre for Population Health |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We are working with Glasgow City Council and Glasgow City Council to develop a methodology for measuring pedestrian and Vehicular activity using images from CCTV cameras. We are providing software and software support to process the images. We are also carrying out a pilot of the process to test the accuracy of the software but also to assess the effectiveness of the process. |
Collaborator Contribution | GCC are providing access to the CCTV images and programming to cameras and image collection initially on 4 cameras in the city centre. Glasgow Centre for population are providing expertise with Active travel and methodology. |
Impact | We have a working system which is providing automatic counts of pedestrians and vehicles from four cameras |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Measuring activity on city streets, Joint project with Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Centre for Public Health |
Organisation | Glasgow City Council |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We are working with Glasgow City Council and Glasgow City Council to develop a methodology for measuring pedestrian and Vehicular activity using images from CCTV cameras. We are providing software and software support to process the images. We are also carrying out a pilot of the process to test the accuracy of the software but also to assess the effectiveness of the process. |
Collaborator Contribution | GCC are providing access to the CCTV images and programming to cameras and image collection initially on 4 cameras in the city centre. Glasgow Centre for population are providing expertise with Active travel and methodology. |
Impact | We have a working system which is providing automatic counts of pedestrians and vehicles from four cameras |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | NextBike Data Agreement (Glasgow City Council) |
Organisation | Glasgow City Council |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | UBDC has an agreement with Glasgow City Council to use their NextBike bikeshare scheme data for non-commercial purposes |
Collaborator Contribution | The data, and access to the live API, provide details of the bikesharing infrastructure and status of each of its stations in real time |
Impact | The data can not currently be shared more widely but is being used in the course of ongoing transportation research within UBDC |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | North Lanarkshire Council Data Sharing Agreement |
Organisation | North Lanarkshire Council |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | UBDC has facilitated the creation of a data sharing agreement between North Lanarkshire Council and the University of Glasgow to provide access to data collected from the Local Authority's online issue reporting platform. This will inform work within the Centre's research agenda relating to changing access to local services in a digital environment |
Collaborator Contribution | North Lanarkshire has provided data including details of issue reports, submitters and local authority responses under a data sharing agreement |
Impact | This is a critical data sharing relationship for this work stream and provides a basis to critically assess the benefits and impacts of digital channels to facilitate communication between citizens and government |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Norwegian Administrative Data Research Project |
Organisation | Norwegian School of Economics |
Country | Norway |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | I have committed time to data analysis, writing papers, and writing funding applications. |
Collaborator Contribution | They have committed time to data analysis, writing papers and writing funding applications. They have also provided access to the register data used in the research. |
Impact | We have had an unsuccessful funding application. We currently have one paper submitted to a journal and one draft of a paper. |
Start Year | 2014 |
Description | Norwegian Administrative Data Research Project |
Organisation | Western Norway University of Applied Sciences |
Country | Norway |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | I have committed time to data analysis, writing papers, and writing funding applications. |
Collaborator Contribution | They have committed time to data analysis, writing papers and writing funding applications. They have also provided access to the register data used in the research. |
Impact | We have had an unsuccessful funding application. We currently have one paper submitted to a journal and one draft of a paper. |
Start Year | 2014 |
Description | Research collaboration with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (South Korea) |
Organisation | Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) |
Country | Korea, Republic of |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | I was invited to give a guest lecture and introduced UBDC. UBDC became a partner of KAIST for the funded project. |
Collaborator Contribution | KAIST is planning to have conferences and meetings related to the funded project and inviting our staff. In June 2020, one of our staff will present his project in the conference. |
Impact | Not yet. However future collaboration plans (e.g., invited talks in the seminars and conferences) are under discussion. In addition, KAIST and UoG are working on MOU. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Research collaboration with University of Seoul (South Korea) |
Organisation | University of Seoul |
Country | Korea, Republic of |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | I visited there and gave a guest lecture about UBDC and recent cycling research. I am currently working on a proposal with them. |
Collaborator Contribution | They gave me an opportunity to introduce our work in UBDC. They seek for a funding opportunity with us in South Korea. |
Impact | We have had several conference calls and are preparing research proposal. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Scottish Open Data Unconference Partnership |
Organisation | Code the City |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | UBDC is supporting the Scottish Open Data Unconference (Aberdeen 14th and 15th March 2020), administered by Code The City, with participation and modest funding |
Collaborator Contribution | The event will bring together data scientists and those with relevant core skills and provide a means to showcase UBDC's own work |
Impact | Participation with a modest sponsorship will provide us with the means to connect with relevant technologist and domain practitioners in the North East region of Scotland |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | Scottish Parliament Information Centre housing Collaborative PhD |
Organisation | Scottish Parliament |
Department | Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We were successful in applying for a Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Collaborative Studentships Competition in 2019. This is a 1+3 and will run from October 2019 through to 2023. I will jointly supervise the PhD a long with Ken Gibb from CaCHE and Kate Berry from SPICe |
Collaborator Contribution | SPICe will co-fund this PhD and Kate Berry will co-supervise the student. |
Impact | Funding for a PhD from the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Smart city standards partnership with BSI |
Organisation | British Standards Institute (BSI Group) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | Collaborative project (UBDC lead: Simon Joss) on the local implementation of BSI smart city standards in the UK. Includes one SGSS-ESRC funded Collaborative PhD Studentship (2019-2023) |
Collaborator Contribution | Co-supervision of doctoral researcher. Joint engagement in research (dissemination) through BSI Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities Committee SDS/2. |
Impact | Pending |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Strathclyde Partnership for Transport |
Organisation | Strathclyde Partnership for Transport |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | We had meetings and collected subway data for research. Our team is currently working on public transport research with the data. |
Collaborator Contribution | They provided us their data so we can do research about public transport system in Glasgow. |
Impact | We are working on a paper about public transport systems in Glasgow. We will use it to make further collaboration with them. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Strava Impact Accelerator Account Partnership |
Organisation | Strava, Inc |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Driven by GDPR and the broader evolving data privacy context, Strava announced in 2018 several changes to the data specification for its Metro product. Among the changes were additional aggregation and rounding of data counts as well as limitations on origin/destination information available from within the dataset. Given the sensitive context, Strava is understandably resistant to implementing a more relaxed data specification. We have had productive conversations with Strava regarding best practice for balancing analytical value with privacy protection, and shared several resources that outline methods for disclosure control that optimise the value of data. There are several methodologies available for achieving similar outcomes, enabling the production of privacy-protected data specifications that offer higher levels of utility than those currently available. Strava colleagues indicated that our feedback regarding the new Metro specification is consistent with that received from elsewhere. We aimedto be able to support Strava's response by initially offering recommendations to support greater flexibility, providing end users with expressive datasets while retaining appropriate safeguards and assurances of methodological robustness. We have therefore undertaken a full substantive review of the new Strava Metro format and sought to evaluate its continued utility and value, including its expressiveness to be used to reproduce existing work undertaken with older specification data. |
Collaborator Contribution | Staff time Strava has agreed to provide a range of resources in support of this research activity, primarily in terms of staff availability, including engineering, spatial specialists and strategic / management, but also including limited data availability: 3 x staff members - 1 product manager, 1 engineer, 1 geospatial analyst 8-10 hours each Non-staff costs Sample data for additional areas of study, custom data builds to support research |
Impact | The study has revealed several opportunities to optimise Strava's new approach, whether in terms of adjustments to the specification itself, or refinement of governance and sharing arrangements to mitigate risks associated with less aggregated data in a less destructive way. We are currently in the final stages of publishing the report and engaging with Strava senior management. We remain hopeful that our role of critical friend will continue to be valued by Strava; the experience has also provided useful opportunities to reflect on some of the challenges and implicit tensions in academic collaborations with commercial organisations, as well as to develop appropriate mitigation measures to effectively offset these. |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Sustrans evaluation of the South City Way using Strava Data |
Organisation | Sustrans |
Department | Research and Monitoring Unit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | We have agreed to carry out an analysis of the new South City Way cycling route which is due to be completed in 2020. This will take place some 6 months after the completion of the infrastructure project. |
Collaborator Contribution | Sustrans manage the overall evaluation and are responsible for the funding of the project |
Impact | The work for this would not be completed until the end of this year early next year but the plans for how the work would be carried out has been agreed. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | The Data Lab Data Fest Fringe |
Organisation | The Data Lab - Innovation Centre |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | UBDC has agreed to run a workshop on effective models for engagement between academia and government as part of Datalab's annual Datafest Fringe |
Collaborator Contribution | Datalab will support our event with promotion and market the event and its outcomes to a wide audience of highly relevant stakeholders |
Impact | Datafest is a premier data-related fixture within the Scottish event calendar and our association with it as part of the fringe will serve to promote our work and extend our reach and influence with key public sector, industry, third sector and academic stakeholders |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | The Improvement Service - Data Agreement |
Organisation | Improvement Service |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | UBDC has been in negotiation for some time with the Improvement Service to help facilitate broader access to data, specifically for academic use. This is expected to be ultimately a responsibility that EDINA will administer through its Digimap platform but for the time being we have been given confirmation that we may act as data distributors provided that terms of use are adhered to |
Collaborator Contribution | Improvement Service has published c. 36 datasets for academic use that UBDC is positioned to promote and assist in making available |
Impact | Data such as nationwide school catchment areas have been long sought after by UBDC and associated researchers so this development has the opportunity to inform well established and refined work |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Transport for Healthy Air Quality (TransportHAQ) Project |
Organisation | Glasgow Centre for Population Health |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | David McArthur and myself worked with others in the partnership to write and submit a proposal to the National Institute for Health Research to evaluate Glasgow City Council's new emission zone and Avenues project. The bid resulted in an application which passed the first stage of the proposal and was submitted to the second stage. David and I contributed expertise in measuring and modelling transport data in general and active travel in particular. We contributed to the specific methods and general methodologies in the proposal. |
Collaborator Contribution | Miranda Loh led the project and had specific expertise in air quality and emissions. Peter Craig contributed to sections on Active travel and led on the Systems approach which was to be used to pull the project together. Bruce Whyte contributed expertise in Active travel and administrative and health data. |
Impact | Successful outline proposal to NIHR Public Health Research programme call: 18/147 Air Pollution: Outdoor air quality and health Full proposal to NIHR Public Health Research programme call: 18/147 Air Pollution: Outdoor air quality and health |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Transport for Healthy Air Quality (TransportHAQ) Project |
Organisation | Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | David McArthur and myself worked with others in the partnership to write and submit a proposal to the National Institute for Health Research to evaluate Glasgow City Council's new emission zone and Avenues project. The bid resulted in an application which passed the first stage of the proposal and was submitted to the second stage. David and I contributed expertise in measuring and modelling transport data in general and active travel in particular. We contributed to the specific methods and general methodologies in the proposal. |
Collaborator Contribution | Miranda Loh led the project and had specific expertise in air quality and emissions. Peter Craig contributed to sections on Active travel and led on the Systems approach which was to be used to pull the project together. Bruce Whyte contributed expertise in Active travel and administrative and health data. |
Impact | Successful outline proposal to NIHR Public Health Research programme call: 18/147 Air Pollution: Outdoor air quality and health Full proposal to NIHR Public Health Research programme call: 18/147 Air Pollution: Outdoor air quality and health |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | Transport for Healthy Air Quality (TransportHAQ) Project |
Organisation | Medical Research Council (MRC) |
Department | MRC Social & Public Health Sciences Unit |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | David McArthur and myself worked with others in the partnership to write and submit a proposal to the National Institute for Health Research to evaluate Glasgow City Council's new emission zone and Avenues project. The bid resulted in an application which passed the first stage of the proposal and was submitted to the second stage. David and I contributed expertise in measuring and modelling transport data in general and active travel in particular. We contributed to the specific methods and general methodologies in the proposal. |
Collaborator Contribution | Miranda Loh led the project and had specific expertise in air quality and emissions. Peter Craig contributed to sections on Active travel and led on the Systems approach which was to be used to pull the project together. Bruce Whyte contributed expertise in Active travel and administrative and health data. |
Impact | Successful outline proposal to NIHR Public Health Research programme call: 18/147 Air Pollution: Outdoor air quality and health Full proposal to NIHR Public Health Research programme call: 18/147 Air Pollution: Outdoor air quality and health |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | UNESCO-UIL Learning Cities |
Organisation | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization |
Department | UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning |
Country | Germany |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The UBDC Educational Disadvantage and Place team, were successful in tendering two of 5 background papers for UNESCO-UIL Learning Cities Network, launched at their annual conference, the briefing paper by Dr. Lido and team was on digital inclusion in learning cities and offered UBDC as part of the UK case study on on ameliorating vulnerabilities related to digital knowledge, literacies and practice. UBDC is acknowledged as case study contributors (through Rhiannon Law as PR outreach) and their open data sharing policies highlighted as global best practice for UNESCO UIL Learning Cities Network. |
Collaborator Contribution | The UBDC Educational Disadvantage and Place team, were successful in tendering two of 5 background papers for UNESCO-UIL Learning Cities Network, launched at their annual conference, however, in addition UNESCO-UIL have a longer history of collaborating with UBDC researchers through our operationalisation of their learning city metrics, namely through the iMCD project, and through invitation of Dr. Lido to sit on their expert panel in Lifelong Learning measurement. |
Impact | The Briefing papers are not yet published by UNESCO, but the UBDC researchers comprised the overall background paper here: https://uil.unesco.org/system/files/iclc2019_backgroundpaper_final_en.pdf |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | Uber Movement Data Agreement |
Organisation | Uber Technologies Inc. |
Country | United States |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Uber has agreed with UBDC to provide early access to its Movement data set to identify research opportunities |
Collaborator Contribution | "Movement shares historical, aggregated, and anonymized data to help provide insights into the towns and cities where Uber operates. There are two types of data we share through Movement: Zone to Zone Travel Times to help cities build towards better traffic and safety outcomes by understanding how average travel times have changed over time across the entire road network. Street Segment Speeds Data to gives historical actuals of speeds at an hourly basis. Historically expensive and difficult to collect for cities,this data is a powerful way to measure the impact of infrastructure investments. Only the first is currently available to UBDC" |
Impact | The data is of limited use although we continue to assess the opportunities that it offers |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | eDRIS Safe Haven Agreement |
Organisation | NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | UBDC has an extended agreement with eDRIS to provide hosting and statistical disclosure control and other services in support of UBDC projects using privacy-sensitive or commercially sensitive datasets |
Collaborator Contribution | The agreement provides access to the safe haven for approved projects, including those supported as part of UBDC's now discontinued Controlled Data Service, or those accessing specific higher risk datasets such as iMCD GPS and Experian commercial data |
Impact | This arrangement ensures the safe access to UBDC and brokered datasets and provides us with a basis to achieve impactful work |
Start Year | 2019 |
Description | iGH20 UK Research and Innovation Strength in Places Project |
Organisation | Glasgow Caledonian University |
Department | School of Health and Life Sciences |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | We contributed to this UKRI application to the Strength in Places call. Our contribution was to provide Big Data expertise to the proposal . |
Collaborator Contribution | The project was led by Colleagues at Glasgow Caledonian University but also included a number of other Universities, private companies and third sector organisations |
Impact | A proposal was submitted in October to the call and we await the outcome |
Start Year | 2019 |
Title | AirBnB Data Collection Platform |
Description | Platform to facilitate the harvest, storage of data taken from AirBnB platform, from user-defined areas of interest. The harvested data are primarily focused around listings and relative information (e.g users who interacted with a listing, reviews, listing details, availability, prices and more) are stored in a structured way such as to retain their relationship and allow their systematic retrieval and quantification using geospatial and temporal filters (i.e. how many comments, between day A and day B, from a set listings defined by a boundary, where made and by whom, by an interval X). Finally, the platform will host an API for users/clients to connect and request data on demand to work independently |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Impact | The project functionality is complete but full rollout of the software is taking place during 2020. Primary impacts are downstream based on use of the resultant data, but the approach can be adapted to other data collection activities. |
Title | CCTV Object Detection Software |
Description | Tool that processes snapshots taken from four CCTV cameras in every 15 minutes. The processing is done in two parts: first the objects of interest are identified by running a pretrained deep learning model developed by Google and second the objects are counted and a resulting report is written into a csv file using python scripting. The pretrained model runs on top of TensorFlow and the output feeds a python script. The object detection and counting API runs on a dedicated Ubuntu server machine with bash and cron configuration files. The objects of interest that are being captured at the moment are persons and different types of vehicles. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | This software has a great potential for the Glasgow City Council to make data-driven decisions about the type of investments to make on the roads : roads mainly for cars usage or to build dedicated cycle paths or even roads and squares to pedestrianize. Furthermore this project can be scaled to all the 600 cctv cameras running by the Glasgow City Council. |
Title | Glasgow traffic data (SCOOT) API Data Collection |
Description | The SCOOT urban traffic control system has been designed to improve traffic control by calculating and implementing optimum signal timings to give minimum overall network delay. a key feature of SCOOT is its traffic model which predicts the main elements of traffic performance-such as flow, delay stops and congestion-from information received every second from detectors on each link in the network. In addition to its use for network control, this up-to-the-minute information is available for any other purpose and can be obtained via standard SCOOT messages at a variety of levels of detail. The data of traffic location, parking availability for city of Glasgow are being collected and stored in the data base. The python code to perform this collection is publicly available via GitHub platform. The application allows to collect and store the data which is important for the transport research , developing policies and strategies. https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre/glasgowtrafficdata |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Impact | Potential for downstream impact based on planned transportation research which will use the SCOOT data. Furthermore, this code for data collection can be repurposed and deployed to facilitate other online data collection activities. |
URL | https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre/glasgowtrafficdata |
Title | Integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) Anonymisation Software |
Description | To protect user privacy participated in iMCD survey python based tool was developed to anonymise user identity using SHA-1 cryptographic hash function. This encryption allows data to be shared with wider public ensuring that privacy protecting measures are met. All code is available in a private repository on GitHub. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | The code facilitates sharing of iMCD data while mitigating associated privacy risks. The potential for impact is primarily associated with future uses of the iMCD data. However, the approach can be replicated and applied to other individual level datasets or where masking of identifiers is required. |
Title | Modified SuiteCRM Platform |
Description | SuiteCRM is the open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software used for the administration of UBDC users' data requests, the management of data acquisitions and reporting for these activities . Modifications and technical developments to the CRM were completed to enhance the recording of user data requests and a wide range of data can be recorded including customer correspondence, customer project details and information about datasets requested and sent by UBDC. The data acquisitions module tracks the acquisitions process from the initial data suggestion to the dataset becoming available to request from UBDC. Details of terms and licensing, data transfer, management, processing and metadata are recorded there. The reporting functionality enables statistics for number of users, number of requests per dataset to be generated, as well as information about users plan to use/used the data. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | More information about data requests and acquistions is recorded in a central place online, which reduces reliance on several external systems and makes the data service administration process more streamlined. The data acquisitions module is now being utilised to record and track information related to the ongoing data acquisitions process. The reporting functionality is frequently utilised to facilitate easy generation of statistics, which are used for impact monitoring and external reports. |
URL | https://crm.ubdc.gla.ac.uk |
Title | Nextbike API Data Collection |
Description | Nextbike is a company who operated public bike -sharing system around the world. It provides data about available and rented bikes, stations in Glasgow via API. The python code to extract data from API has been developed and made publicly available via GitHub platform. This data could facilitate transport related research, promote sustainable transport and evaluate influence of bike usage and available infrastructure on a wider public. https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre/nextbike |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | Potential for downstream impact based on planned transportation research which will use the Nextbike data. Furthermore, this code for data collection can be repurposed and deployed to facilitate other online data collection activities. |
URL | https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre/nextbike |
Title | Registers of Scotland Price Paid Aggregation / Extraction |
Description | Registers of Scotland is the official register of land and property in Scotland , it provides data of all sale and long lease transactions . The data comes in a spreadsheet with all the data stored as a text. This brings challenges to extract property price information as the price field contains various legal information along with price data itself. This software output is a Jupyter Notebook, an open-source web application that allows users to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations and narrative text. Uses include: data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modelling, data visualization, machine learning, and much more. All code is available in a private repository on GitHub. The data clean up tool using Jupiter notebooks has been created to allow quick and easy price data extraction. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Impact | Potential for downstream impacts as end users have access to an aggregated Registers of Scotland (RoS) dataset - the terms and conditions of our main RoS license limit sharing of the full dataset but permit us to share aggregated summary statistics of e.g. average house price or number of sales by datazone (subject to minimum cell sizes). |
Title | Strava extract / Ogr2OGr tools using GDAL library for data loading and extraction |
Description | The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Bespoke code for loading Strava dataset to database and the code to extract it has been developed and made publicly available via GitHub platform. https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre/strava |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | The code to extract Strava data is primarily in support of our data service function - the impact that shared data has and will have is widespread and documented. The core libraries that we are adapting can be deployed in other types of data extraction, again offering benefits and potential for downstream impact. |
URL | https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre/strava |
Title | UBDC Github Implementation |
Description | An organisational account allowing UBDC developers and data scientists to store code, models and developed tools was created on the GitHub platform. As well as facilitating management and sustainability of the Centre's codebase and technical outputs it allows sharing code with public, part of our overall transparency agenda. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | This provides a basis for managing and sharing all of UBDC's technical outputs. Its potential for impact is therefore not direct, but is an essential facilitator to the achievement of impact with third party use of these resources. |
URL | https://github.com/urbanbigdatacentre |
Title | iMCD GPS / Greenspace Data Extraction Software |
Description | To better process GPS data collected during iMCD project and to evaluate user interactions with greenspace the python code has been produced using Jupyter Notebooks. All code is available in a private repository on GitHub. |
Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Impact | The code facilitates spatial linking of iMCD GPS data. The potential for impact is primarily associated with future uses of the iMCD data. However, the approach can be replicated and applied to other individual level datasets. |
Description | Invited Talk by Co-I Dr Konstantinos Ampountolas: Motorway tidal flow lane control, 11th April 2019, Transport Institute, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | During this presentation Dr. Ampountolas proposed a simple and practical real-time strategy for efficient motorway tidal flow lane control. A switching policy based on the fundamental diagram, that requires only aggregated measurements of density (or occupancy). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.tudelft.nl/evenementen/2019/transport-institute/transport-thursday-11th-of-april-motorwa... |
Description | 9th International Symposium on Travel Demand Management (TDM 19-21 Jun 2019, HILTON EDINBURGH GROSVENOR, Edinburgh, UK) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Saeed Maadi presented his work in the conference. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Building a Future for the Urban Analytics Blueprint Event - 16-18 October 2020 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | UBDC Researcher Qunshan Zhao gave a talk at the Building a Future for the Urban Analytics Blueprint event run by The Alan Turing Institute, Princes Wharf, Bristol on the 17 October 2019. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
URL | https://www.ubdc.ac.uk/education-and-events/events-and-courses/past-events-2019/building-a-future-fo... |
Description | CREATe Copyright Centre - Text and Data Mining and the Law Talk |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Andrew McHugh (10/10/19) - Invited talk at workshop exploring issues around data collection and intellectual property law. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2019/12/11/create-symposium-2019-information-research-data-and-open-sc... |
Description | CaCHE Short Term Lets seminar |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Dr. David McArthur gave a talk about how open data can be used to better understand the effect of short term rentals on cities. The event was intended to improve the policy response to the large growth in the market for short term lets. After the talk, three UBDC researchers were asked to attend a roundtable event organised by the Scottish Government. We were also approached by the Dublin Housing Observatory to collaborate on research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.ubdc.ac.uk/education-and-events/events-and-courses/past-events-2019/cache-seminar-short-... |
Description | CodetheCity Scottish Data Science Technology Meetup - SUDS / March 19 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Obinna Anejionu presented at the Aberdeen Data Science meetup on March 12th 2019 a talk entitled "Activating big data with spatial context to derive deeper insight in socioeconomic research" |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.meetup.com/Scotland-Data-Science-Technology-Meetup/events/256813260/ |
Description | Interview for the Financial Times |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
Results and Impact | UBDC's Associate Director for Training and Capacity Building, Dr David McArthur, was interviewed for a Financial Times article on the potential for Strava data to generate big data that can be used for public development. In the article entitled 'City planners zero in on cyclists through exercise app', they note that David "compared journeys logged by Strava against roadside counts and found the numbers correlated relatively well." The article goes on to say: "He has found, based on data from the app, that when segregated cycle-only paths were built cycling volumes increased by 12-18 per cent; when a lane was simply painted on the road the number dropped. "The app "opens up new modelling possibilities", Mr McArthur said, but noted important discrepancies in the data. There are more Strava users, for example, in wealthier west Glasgow than the east of the city, so using the data alone could risk replicating deeper inequalities." This article, which reached a potential of 1m readers (from FT circulation statistics) has contributed to dissemination of UBDC research outcomes across an international audience. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.ft.com/content/bfd4dbaa-061b-11ea-9afa-d9e2401fa7ca |
Description | Invited talk by Co-I Dr Konstantinos Ampountolas: A Sociotechnical Systems Approach for Energy-Efficient Mobility in Smart Cities, July 8-9, 2019, Philadelphia, USA |
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 at Workshop on Control for Networked Transportation Systems (CNTS), July 8 - 9, 2019, Philadelphia, USA. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | http://cnts.isis.vanderbilt.edu/ |
Description | Invited talk by Co-I Dr Konstantinos Ampountolas: Workshop on Traffic Flow Modelling and Control, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Jul 28-29, 2019 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Invited talk at Workshop on Traffic Flow Modelling and Control, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Jul 28-29, 2019. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Open Data and Data Literacy Roundtable Meeting (Scottish Government) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Andrew McHugh attended an Open Data and Data Literacy Round Table Meeting hosted by the Scottish Government and chaired by Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician & Data Officer, Scottish Government On 31 January 2019, Scotland's Scotland's Open Government Action Plan 2018-2020 was launched. This contains a series of detailed commitments. One of these commitments is to improve the way information and data are used, in particular around developing data literacy within Scottish society. We recognise that giving greater access to information alone is not sufficient. The ability to find and filter databases and datasets, identify and isolate noteworthy information from raw data, and turn this into insights to inform decision making all remain out of reach for most citizens. Thus, data literacy must be developed in order to foster citizen empowerment through the use of data. Aims of this round table meeting were: • To scope out, identify and seek agreement on what the Scottish Government and its partners can do to tackle the issues of data literacy. • To secure agreements from delegates about what can be achieved in the context of Scotland's Open Government Action Plan and how we can measure success in an sustainable manner. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-data-and-data-literacy-roundtable-meeting-tickets-58283588783# |
Description | Participation in external engagement at DemoFest 2019 (Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Attendance as an exhibiting partner at the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) DemoFest 2019 event. This is an annual knowledge exchange event, aimed at bringing together researchers in data science and the computational sciences and industry, public sector and governmental bodies. Representatives from the Urban Big Data Centre attended a keynote from the Head of Data and AI at InnovateUK and demonstrated the work of the Urban Big Data Centre throughout the exhibition. The activity was aimed at raising the profile of the Centre among the aforementioned groups and led to a number of discussions with potential collaborators. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Presentation at the TRB conference, Jan 13-17, 2019, Washington DC, USA |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | I presented my work in the TRB conference (The largest International transport conference). Title: The role of numeracy and financial literacy skills in the relationship between information and communication technology use and travel behaviour (currently under review in Travel Behaviour and Society) |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Privacy, Trust and Security in Internet of Things (IOT) (1 - 3, December 2019, Ardoe House Hotel & Spa, Aberdeen, UK) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Varun Raturi presented our work on the impact of privacy regulations on the quality of crowdsourced data (STRAVA). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Registers of Scotland Open Data Agenda |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | UBDC was invited to attend a Registers of Scotland Statistics and Users day, in order to present a case for open day in a general sense, but more specifically to articulate a basis under which Registers of Scotland's data (currently available on a commercial, paid basis only) could be made more openly available. This has led to follow up conversations which are ongoing within which we continue to present the benefits of a more open approach to data availability (particularly for academic audiences). Andrew McHugh presented at the initial event on 26th November 2019. This overall activity has the opportunity to be extremely impactful - that Registers of Scotland's price paid data is not already open is a point of some contention - the equivalent Land Registry data in England and Wales is available under an Open Government Licence. One result is that the Scottish data has remained fairly inaccessible to academic researchers, due to its prohibitive pricing. UBDC's agreement to facilitate access incurs significant costs, which themselves largely rule out more exploratory work, and impose additional governance burdens in the evaluation of proposals. Open Scottish Land Registry data would be a great enabler to a range of research activities and may be a spark to significant innovation within the property domain. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020 |
Description | School visit (University of Seoul: June 13th, 2019 - and KAIST: June 17th, 2019 ) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | I was invited a talk and presented my work in UBDC to faculty members and graduate students in both University of Seoul and KAIST. Very positive and strong interests in UBDC and our transport work. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Scoping study participation re: Gambling Aware data management |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | Andrew McHugh invited to formally consult on The University of Leeds' commissioned study (by Gamble Aware) to assess options and provide recommendations as to how best an independent repository of gambling industry data should be established and maintained - to provide maximum access to data for researchers, benefits to policy-makers and industry, with the appropriate safeguards for consumers and gambling operators. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
Description | Scottish Government Consultation event for Academics on Short term lets |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | I attended this Scottish Government Consultation on Short Term lets, which followed their announcement they would be considering legislation to lesson the impact. I attended the event with two other colleagues from UBDC. As well as the leading civil servants the meeting was attended with 5 other academics. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://consult.gov.scot/housing-services-policy-unit/short-term-lets/ |
Description | Scottish Government consultation on Housing 2040 vision with academics |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | I attended a Scottish Government academic consultation into their "Housing 2040" document. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
URL | https://consult.gov.scot/housing-services-policy-unit/housing-to-2040/ |
Description | UBDC DataFest Fringe Event: Effective Models for Data-Driven Collaborations between Universities and Government |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
Results and Impact | UBDC organised this workshop as part of The Data Lab's annual DataFest - a two-week festival across Scotland focussing on Data Innovation. Approximately 30 delegates attended, from Local Government, Third-Sector, Academia and Business. The event aimed to explore and identify opportunities for data-driven collaborations between academia and Government. The event featured specific case studies about successful collaborations between UBDC and local Government bodies, including Glasgow City Council and North Lanarkshire Council. Following the talks, delegates were involved in a range of interactive exercises which examined the key issues around developing collaborations between academia and Government. The event proved to be very successful, facilitating much discussion. The event was also effective as a profile-raising exercise for UBDC, introducing the work of the Centre and some examples of its successful collaborations to a range of new contacts. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
URL | https://www.ubdc.ac.uk/education-and-events/events-and-courses/past-events-2020/effective-models-for... |