Home » Archives for November 2018

Data Analysts User Group conference 2018 – videos now available

On 26th October 2018 the CDRC sponsored and supported the 15th annual Data Analysts User Group Conference (DUG), at the Royal Society.
This year’s conference was entitled “Analysis of Diversity and the Diversity of Analysis: Rising to the Challenges…” and looked to address the questions

  1. How do we deliver analytical results that treat diversity fairly and without prejudice?
  2. How do we realise the benefits of diverse teams in the delivery and output of analysis?

Presentations

The following presentations are now available to watch online:

Chair’s Introduction
Tim Drye, Data Analysts User Group

“What’s in a Name…”
Paul Longley, Professor of Geography & Director of CDRC,  UCL

“Taking a different viewpoint”
Duncan Mann, Hoxton Analytics

“The CDRC’s Masters Research Dissertation Programme and Me” &  2018 Masters Research Dissertation Programme awards
Panel Session chaired by Keith Dugmore, Data Analysts User Group & Demographic Decisions with Guy Lansley CDRC UCL, Anastasia Ushakova, University of Edinburgh, Andy Simpson, Virgin Media, Christian Tonge, Movement Strategies

“Experience in Boots”
Gillian McNulty and Emma Eatch

“Diversity in a Crisis – The work of MapAction”
Liz Hughes, CEO, MapAction

Chair’s Final Reflections and the DUG Award
Tim Drye, Data Analysts User Group

CDRC Research Fellow post available with our Liverpool team

The CDRC Liverpool team have an exciting Research Fellow role available.  Based in the Geographic Data Science Lab the successful candidate will provide data science / analytics support to CDRC activities. Research projects will be focused on deliverables that are externally facing, and will likely be situated within the themes of health, housing, population or infrastructure (transportation / digital etc). Candidates should have a PhD or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Geographic Information Science, Quantitative Social Science or other related quantitative discipline and will be joining a large team of PhD and other researchers at the University of Liverpool as well as working with the CDRC team at UCL. The post is available in the first instance until 31 January 2020. Closing date for applications 6th December 2018.

For more information see here.

Dive into Data 2019 – UCL

The CDRC at UCL are delighted to be supporting an exciting data challenge ‘Dive into Data’ in partnership with the UCL eResearch Domain and UCL Grand Challenges.  Open to UCL academics, researchers and masters students from all disciplines we are looking for novel and innovative ways to analyse and/or visualise our open or safeguarded consumer data to gain new insights into one (or more) of the UCL Grand Challenge priority themes.

Expressions of interest should be submitted by the 18th January 2019 with full case studies to be submitted by 8th May 2019.  Finalists will be invited to present their work at the e-Research Domain annual conference in June.

For further information https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/domains/eresearch/diveintodata

How Healthy are our High Streets?

With the closure of many major high street names through 2018 with the loss of over 40,000 jobs the importance of understanding how our high streets are performing has never been more important.  With the Chancellor announcing £1.5bn high street relief along with the digital services tax in this week’s budget, the daily reports of retailers closing and struggling and the launch of The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) report ‘Health on the High Street Running on Empty’ highlighting the UK’s healthiest and unhealthiest high streets research and data available from the CDRC is of particular value.

The CDRC has produced a series of indicators and maps that can help give a picture on how our high streets are doing starting by defining retail catchments and typologies; how many people are on our high streets at any time; looking at the impact of the internet and then examining the wider picture of how access to the facilities provided by our high streets can impact our own heath.

Retail Typologies

The RSPH report provides interesting insights into the evolution of British High streets and the impact they can have on health. Nevertheless, it covers only 70 of the largest high streets in the country and focuses on a small number of retail and service types around leisure, retail services and some convenience retail outlets.

Launched today our multidimensional typology of over 3000 retail centres groups all centres into a number of clusters based on a much wider range of characteristics. As such, it provides a more comprehensive platform for a cross-comparison of retail centres across various spatial scales. It uses metrics derived for both retail centres and catchment demographics which are captured by a number of domains including composition, function, form, diversity and economic health.

Such cross-comparison not only provides a better understanding of how the contemporary consumption spaces are evolving, but also offers substantial analytical leverage for investment.

For further information see Why some retail centres out perform others

For maps see https://maps.cdrc.ac.uk/#/geodemographics/retailtypology

For data see https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/historic-retail-centre-boundaries

Footfall Index

Working with the Local Data Company on the SmartStreetSensor project, CDRC researchers have access to data from around 900 footfall sensors located in retail centres around the UK.  From these data we can explore how busy our high streets are and how different events, such as the ‘Beast from the East’ and the summer heatwave impact footfall.  We have produced the CDRC-LDC footfall index looking at monthly footfall changes across the UK and the data are available at various levels of aggregation to researchers through the CDRC safeguarded service.

For CDRC-UCL footfall index https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/stories/united-kingdom-footfall-index

For CDRC Safeguarded footfall data and the CDRC Footfall Atlas see:

https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/local-data-company-smartstreetsensor-footfall-data-%E2%80%93-research-aggregated-data

https://www.cdrc.ac.uk/the-smartstreetsensor-footfall-atlas-explained-copy/

Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards

Focusing on purely the high street ignores the wider influences of our health in the communities and neighbourhoods outside of them. For example, the average individual is located 1.12km from their nearest pub, 1.21km to their nearest gambling outlet, 1.05km to their nearest GP. These are the equivalent of a few minutes drive time, or a 10 minute walk. These aggregate statistics also hide variations and inequalities in the types of environments people are exposed to. People in the most deprived neighbourhoods in Great Britain are twice as close to most types of unhealthy retail outlets, but also located nearer to the majority of health services.

The CDRC has produced a free resource called ‘Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards’ that maps out the accessibility to environmental features that influence our health.

For more information see ‘Why Great Britain’s rural areas may not be as healthy as we think’

For AHAH maps https://mapmaker.cdrc.ac.uk/#/access-healthy-assets-hazards

For AHAH data https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/access-healthy-assets-hazards-ahah

Internet User Classification 2018 and 2014

The CDRC’s Internet User Classification is a unique classification to determine how people living in Great Britain interact with the Internet. Offering 10 unique classes of Internet Use and Engagement a picture can be drawn as to how likely the population may be to shop online rather than in their local high street.  Influenced by demographic factors such as population age or ethnicity as well as locational factors such as mobile broadband speeds this classification gives a unique insight into how likely a particular high street may be impacted by online shopping.

For more information see The Great British Geography of Internet Use and Engagement

For IUC 2018 map  https://mapmaker.cdrc.ac.uk/#/internet-user-classification

For IUC 2018 data https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/internet-user-classification

For further details on any of the featured research please contact the CDRC at info@cdrc.ac.uk