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CDRC exhibit at UCL Festival of Culture 2016

The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) had a successful outing at the UCL Festival of Culture, held across University College London (UCL) from 23 – 27 May.

The aim of the week-long event was to showcase the rich and enthralling diversity of the world-class research carried out within the university, with over 80 free public events held across the campus.

The CDRC hosted their exhibition in the Department of Geography foyer. Titled ‘Mapping the masses: what does big data say about you’ our exhibition took the form of short interactive drop in sessions for all,  showcasing CDRC research, our mapping portal and datastore.

The exhibition was received extremely well, with over 70 local, national and international attendees from across various academic and non-academic disciplines. There was heightened interest in our visualisations, with attendees keen to explore our mapping portal and identify ways in which it could be utilised for their specific area of interest; the exhibition coincided with the launch of our latest map – ‘Top country of birth across the UK’ – and all attendees seemed keen to identify key trends within their area.

With a range of international visitors from France to Canada, discussion also centred on the significance of big data in their respective nations, leading to interest in the development, execution and use of the datastore.

The twitter hashtag for the event – #uclculture – generated animated feedback. Martin Compton, Senior Lecturer in Learning, Teaching & Professional Development, University of Greenwich, called it a “fascinating exhibition” with particular emphasis on our visualisations; Naomi Rintoul, Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University, found the exhibition”very interesting”.

For more on the programme.

Retail Location Analysis 2016 – videos now available

30 years of insight into location planning: Retail Location Analysis (RLA) is an annual executive education programme run by the Oxford Institute of Retail Management within the Saïd Business School’s programme portfolio, now in its 30th year. It is designed for retail managers with oversight of or day-to-day responsibility for location planning and development and has become an important date in retailers’ diaries. This year, participants were drawn from organisations in the Netherlands, USA, Croatia, Germany, Ireland as well as the UK.

As in the previous year, with support from the ESRC’s Consumer Data Research Centre, the Institute will be making presentations from two of the contributors available on line. In the first, Jonathan Reynolds and David Rogers, Programme Directors talk about ‘Setting the Scene: Location Planning Research in the New Retail Landscape’ whilst Professor Alex Singleton, from Liverpool University, discusses his work on ‘The E-Resilience of Retail Centres’. Both Jonathan and Alex are directors of CDRC.

For the second time, two CDRC bursaries were made available to support the costs of attending the programme for academics from the Ireland (College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology) and internationally (Croatia, HIPD).

cdrcscholars

From left: Bill Dwan (Dublin Institute of Technology),
Alex Singleton, Ozren Pleše (HIPD),and Jonathan Reynolds.

CDRC presentations from the Retail Location Analysis 2016 available now: 

 

Focus on: Research Associate Guy Lansley

Guy Lansley is an academic based at the UCL branch of the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC). He first joined UCL in 2012 as a Teaching Fellow in Population Geography before joining the CDRC as a Research Associate in 2014. Guy’s research is primarily focused on understanding areas and activities from big datasets.

His first area of research explored the utility of geo-tagged social media posts for urban analytics and utilised novel text mining techniques to quantify how the nature of posts vary by space, time and between users. His current research explores consumer and administrative datasets. Recent publications have included research on modelling the demographic characteristics of forenames using market data and examining variations in car ownership using registration records provided by the DVLA.

Guy also manages the CDRC Masters Research Dissertation Programme. Each year the initiative offers a number of opportunities for Masters students to undertake consumer data focused dissertations with the support of a large company. Since 2012 24 companies have contributed research projects within the programme. These companies have included large retailers such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Argos; utilities providers such as British Gas and E.On; and retail consultancies such as CACI UK and Local Data Company.

Each of the projects are unique and offer the opportunity to tackle real world problems. This year 15 students are participating programme and summaries of their findings will be published on the CDRC website in October. Details can be found at: https://www.cdrc.ac.uk/retail-masters/.

How can Big Data help deliver sustainability strategies?

Over the past few months we’ve been running a series of articles on Big Data and Sustainability in collaboration with the Innovation Forum, an organisation who produce high level events and analysis around sustainability trends and opportunities for business.

Article: How can Big Data help deliver sustainability strategies?

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Professor William Young, Consumer Data Research Centre

The rapid growth of “big data” presents companies with real opportunities to improve business performance. In this article Professor William Young  outlines ten.
Read article

 

Article: How will the ‘internet of things’ help us control sustainability impacts better?

samsung_IOT

Authors: Wouter van Tol, Director of sustainability and citizenship at Samsung Electronics Europe & Professor William Young, Consumer Data Research Centre

As a fully-connected world develops, smart technology will help reduce energy use and promote more sustainable lifestyles.  Samsung’s Wouter van Tol and Prof William Young discuss the potential impact of the ‘internet of things’ and the skills required to harness it.
Read article 

 

Article: Do only affluent consumers buy green-labelled products?

Grocery cart filled with nutritious fruits and vegetables.

Authors: Dr Chris Brown, Senior Director of sustainable business at Asda Stores;  Dr Andy Peloe, Concept Manager at Callcredit; Professor William Young, Consumer Data Research Centre

Combining sales and demographic data can provide better insight into consumer behaviour.  The authors discuss how the Consumer Data Research Centre, Asda and Callcredit came together to explore if there are links between the affluence of consumers and green-labelled products they buy.

Read article

Webinar: How can Big Data help deliver sustainability strategies?

Simply_Organic_World

 

Panellists:

  • Dr Chris Brown, Senior Director of Sustainable Business, Asda
  • Dr Andy Peloe, Concept Manager, Callcredit
  • Wouter van Tol, Director of Sustainability and Citizenship, Samsung Electronics Europe
  • Professor William Young, Consumer Data Research Centre

Discussion Points:

  • What are the opportunities from the use of big data?
  • How are companies looking at long-term trends in customer buying patterns? How does this compare with attitudes in terms of sustainable buying choices?
  • What are the challenges and opportunities presented by developments in smart gadgets? How can these be used to manage big data?
  • How can data sets be segmented to give useful information on attitudes towards sustainability issues?

Listen online

 

CDRC in the News

The Conversation

Charge of the lycra brigade: will the Tour de Yorkshire attract more people to cycling?

The Conv

The Mirror

Where does your surname originate from?

The mirror headline snip

Named

Our Named site, which received significant local and national coverage, predicted where we think you might have met and where your surname may be unusually popular. Additional media coverage in  The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Sun. 

The Daily Mail Named snip

The Guardian

How to fake a giant rat (and why you shouldn’t trust pictures on the internet)

Our researcher, Oliver O’Brien, put his research skills to very different use by concluding that images claiming a 4 foot rat had been found on the streets of Hackney were, infact, an optical illusion.

Image by Tony Smith - pictured with the giant rat
Image by Tony Smith – pictured with the ‘giant rat’

 

CityLab

Mapping where immigrants settle in London, street-by-street

New & exclusive map: ‘Top country of birth across the UK’

Ever wondered if Brixton is still home to a large Jamaican community or if Little Italy continues to thrive? Our new map aims to explore this and other such trends emerging across the UK.

Titled ‘Top country of birth’, the map has been developed by our researcher Oliver O’Brien who states “The purpose of the map is to identify and map the approximate extent of single-country communities within the UK”.

Further details about the map, including the colour coding pertaining to each community for the purposes of the map, can be found at Oliver O’Brien’s blog 

CDRC Forum bridges the gap between retail & academia

On Friday 6 May 2016 the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) hosted its first Data Partner Forum at the prestigious Said Business School, University of Oxford.

The aim of the event was to bring together a host of existing and potential data partners along with interested academics to engage with current and future consumer data research initiatives through our centre. Led by our team of Directors’ – Professors’ Mark Birkin, Paul Longley & Jonathan Reynolds – the event saw an excellent mix of attendees from both consumer related organisations and the world of academia.

This day consisted of three sessions:
Missing Data and Missing People
Novel data sources and their geographic interaction
Big data and research design

Each session entailed short presentations by a number of our researchers to discussing the ways in which they are utilising consumer related data to better understand and explain patterns of social behaviour.

Presentations included ‘missing values in consumer big data’, ‘ambient population in the context of crime’, ‘the SmartStreetSensor project’, amongst others. Each presentation was followed by a question and answer session that generated a significant amount of debate.

Mark Witherspoon, Data Services Director at Zoopla Property Group LTD (ZPG) said “I attended the forum on Friday and found each of the sessions thoroughly engaging – and as hoped, the event gave me a far deeper appreciation of the value of ‘novel’ data sources and their real contribution in supporting consumer research. Zoopla is delighted to be able to support the CRDC with continued access to our data”.

The day closed with an evening reception and poster exhibition that showcased the various research completed by our Phd students which generated significant interest from attendees.

Post the event, Phd student Ed Dargan posted a blog ‘Can bad data be good data? Reflections upon the Consumer Data Research Centre Partner Forum’, summarizing the event as a “very good day”. For blog post. 

Click here for the agenda.

 

Paul delivering closing remarks 3 CDRC forum 16

CDRC Director Paul Longley delivers the closing remarks at the forum

Leeds & UCL Networking
Pictured during the networking reception: students’ from University of Leeds and UCL
CDRC Directors' mark Birkin (L) and Paul Longley (R) during the evening reception
CDRC Directors’ Mark Birkin (L) and Paul Longley (R) during the evening reception
Paul James & Jonathan CDRC Forum 16
Members of the CDRC Senior Management Team – Paul Longley (L), James Cheshire and Jonathan Reynolds (R)

Charge of the lycra brigade: will the Tour de Yorkshire attract more people to cycling?

Matthew Whittle, University of Leeds; Alison Heppenstall, University of Leeds, and Nik Lomax, University of Leeds

Competitors in the second Tour de Yorkshire cycling event have begun their three-day route through many of the region’s towns and cities, racing toward the finish line in Scarborough. This event has largely been developed off the back of the success of Le Grand Départ – the opening stages of the Tour de France – which was hosted by Yorkshire in 2014.

Yorkshire’s leg of Le Grand Départ was viewed as a great triumph, generating £128m for the local economy and attracting an estimated 3.6m visitors to the region. It was said that the event would boost the popularity of cycling – and indeed, the sport is undergoing something of a renaissance in the UK.

But up until now, there has been no detailed research on who attended Le Grand Départ – so there was no telling whether the event did reach out to a new audience. Now, we have used a unique dataset to investigate whether Le Grand Départ was attended by all sections of society – or just “the Mamils” (middle-aged men in lycra).

March of the Mamils

Yorkshire has a relatively diverse population, in terms of ethnicity, 7.3% are Asian, 1.5% are black, and in terms of economic profile, pockets of deprivation sit alongside some of the wealthiest areas in the country. If the event was truly inclusive, we might expect these populations to figure more prominently at Le Grand Départ.

Over 4,000 questionnaires were taken over the course of the three opening days of Le Grand Départ in 2014. We analysed these to pull out the basic demographic information of those who attended. Our analysis revealed that the demographic profile of the spectators as a group is skewed: it is more white, male and middle-aged than the national profile.

Over 97% of those who came to the event were white (compared to 86% of the population who reported as white in the 2011 Census), with the proportion of male spectators slightly over the national average (51% compared with 49%). There was also a clear over-representation of spectators aged 35 to 44 (23% of all spectators compared with 17% of the national population), 45 to 54 (25% compared with 17%) and 55 to 64 (17% compared with 14%). These traits match up with the group popularly known as Mamils.

Even so, we were surprised to find that there was a relatively equal gender split at most locations (bar the “King of the Mountains” sites). According to the National Travel Survey, men cycle more than women: in 2014, men made over three times as many trips by bike as women, with those aged 30 to 49 covering more miles than any other age group. The equal attendance at Le Grand Départ is encouraging, because it shows that events like this may have a role to play in reducing the gender imbalance in the sport.

Access denied

However, the same cannot be said for other demographics: for instance, the spectator group was less disabled (4%) than the national average (12%). And while this is likely due to a smaller proportion of spectators being over 65-years-old, it could also be attributed to the difficulty of access at many stages of the route. Generally, where the route is least accessible the demography of the spectators is more skewed away from the national average.

This is most prominently seen in the least accessible (and arguably most exciting) “King of the Mountains” sections of the race, usually staged in the most rural areas. Here, the proportion of male spectators jumps to 56%, while the proportion of spectators with disabilities drops to 2%. This does suggest that there may be barriers to access for certain groups in the least accessible places.

This data was combined with a socio-economic classification to draw a clearer picture of the type of person who came to spectate. Again, we found that the composition of spectators for each of the three opening stage of the 2014 Tour de France in Yorkshire is unlike the national average.

Between 79% (stage two) and 83% (stages one and three) of spectators fall within one of the three most affluent categories, while those classified as the most financially comfortable (“affluent achievers”) represent more than twice the national average at stages one and three. There is variation at different sections of the route: the relatively inaccessible “King of the Mountains” sections were primarily attended by “affluent achievers” (39%) and “comfortable communities” (37%), while the least affluent “urban adversity” group only accounted for 1% of the total crowd at these locations.

The positive benefits of hosting large scale events like Le Grand Départ and the Tour de Yorkshire are compelling. Beyond short-term economic benefits and positive publicity for the region, the social capital delivered by these events should not be underestimated – there’s no doubt that they bring communities together in celebration.

But high profile events, which require public expenditure and goodwill to go ahead, should be accessible to all. Evidence suggests that the crowd who turned out for Le Grand Départ was not particularly representative of the wider population. In the interest of fairness – and indeed longer-term justice in our society – we could, and should, do more to ensure that cycling and other major sporting events are accessible for all.The Conversation

Matthew Whittle, PhD candidate Transport Studies, University of Leeds; Alison Heppenstall, Associate Professor in Geocomputation, University of Leeds, and Nik Lomax, Lecturer in Population Geography, University of Leeds

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.