Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service (HASP)

The Healthy and Sustainable Smart Places (HASSP) Data Service will build a new integrated platform for place-based research utilising Smart Data, enabling our most pressing and persistent challenges in health and sustainability to be assessed together, intersecting and in place. HASSP will have particular focus on two thematic pillars: (1) Healthy and Sustainable Food and Lifestyles; and (2) Healthy and Sustainable Mobility. Through extensive partnerships with data owners in the SDRUK defined retail and business and in mobility and infrastructure domains, HASSP will introduce new Smart Data into established challenge areas, providing unprecedented opportunities for generating novel research questions that cut across disciplines and maximise the benefit and impact of Smart Data research.

HASSP draws on a long-standing track-record of building data partnerships, secure data-focused technical infrastructure and associated professional services led support which has resulted in award-winning research and impact. Tried-and-tested processes, driving best practice at the intersection between academia and business, have been developed by the applicant team over ten years in their leadership of the Consumer Data Research Centre at Leeds (CDRC-L). Building on this infrastructure, capability and the trust of both users and data owners, HASSP will deliver benefits to the Smart Data community from day one. This encapsulates support for the entire research lifecycle: from negotiating data access, through analytical support, to dissemination and impact support, HASSP will deliver a service that reduces barriers to entry for users of Smart Data.

The HASSP focus on place is fundamental. Places frame how people live their lives - they are settings where we work, shop, socialise, and move; they influence our decisions, lifestyles, and health; and represent the confluence of a diverse set of intersecting social systems. They are increasingly recognised as central to the future of UK policymaking - be it in relation to Levelling Up12, tackling health inequalities11, or promoting innovation13. Stakeholders must adapt to this changing landscape, supported by a data service landscape that provides equitable access to, and promotes responsible use of, Smart Data.

Smart data provides new opportunities to examine and understand challenges in places. The diversity of emerging data, available with fine spatial and temporal granularity, allow us to combine intelligence from diverse perspectives in specific, shared settings. By combining smart data and place, we become less constrained by conventional geographies, or traditional practices around preferred analysis boundaries, smoothing pathways for interdisciplinary collaboration and hypothesis building. HASSP focus on health and sustainability reflects the need to address the most pressing challenges of our time, and the fact of their intricate connectivity in place.

Partnership and responsible research is inherent in the HASSP approach, and a facet established through years of practice, process, and trust-building through CDRC-L. Partnership within HASSP is taken to the next level. New Delivery Partners will work with us to deliver benefits from co-produced Smart Data research. An Advisory Board, consisting of senior industry, third sector and academic figures who are expert in using Smart Data, aligned with HASSP thematic areas, will be given a strong remit to hold the leadership team to account. A Fellowship programme will introduce new ways for the Smart Data Community to work with and within HASSP. New research partnerships, supported by in-kind PhD students, will ask pressing questions on the interface of Smart Data research and responsible practice.