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Is the environment conspiring against us to make us fat?

 

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Michelle Morris
Director of the ESRC Strategic Network for Obesity

 

Overweight and Obesity are a huge problem worldwide. The cost to the UK NHS is £5.1 billion annually with £11.5 billion annual cost to wider society. This does not account for the significantly reduced health related quality of life for overweight or obese individuals.  Overweight and obesity are also closely associated with type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, which place further burden on individuals and society. It is a serious situation and one which is not going away quickly.

So what causes overweight and obesity? In the simplest terms they are a result of eating too much and not moving enough. However, in the real world of everyday life it is a much more complex and multifaceted relationship. Sometimes it feels like our environment conspires against any best laid plans to improve diet and increase physical activity, thus reducing or preventing incidence of overweight and obesity. Imagine these scenarios:

  1. You forget to take your lunch to work, the local café or corner shop often lack healthy options. Fish and chips are on offer again and you know that will keep you full all afternoon.
  2. You end up working late and miss the circuit training class you had planned to attend at the gym. You are so hungry and tired that you decide to pick up a take away from the Pizza shop you pass on your way home.
  3. You think that cycling to work would be nice and a good way to build activity into your day – but wait, it is often raining, the roads are really busy and you are not confident with crossing that big intersection where there is no bike lane. You could cycle on the canal tow path, but it is dark and there have been a number of attacks there and you don’t feel safe.
  4. Your office is on the 5th floor. That is 100 vertical steps. It would only take a few minutes each day and contribute to increased levels of physical activity. However, the lift is just there, I might have to wait, but I’m tired and I really can’t be bothered with the stairs.

I think most of us can relate to all of these scenarios. Ultimately as an individual we make the choices but often we may feel like there are a number of other people, situations or organisations at fault. This is why to better understand and ultimately tackle overweight and obesity many different types of organisations need to come together. In an era of growing volumes of data on all aspects of human behaviours it is timely to bring big data analytics into the forefront of obesity research.

It is exactly this that the ESRC Strategic Network for Obesity is trying to achieve. This international network brings together experts from many disciplines within and beyond academia to explore how we can use data about us and our environment to table overweight and obesity. How can we improve the environment so that it is easier to be physically active and eat well than it is to jump in the car and nip to a take-away? Hopefully we can find answers to this question through our network meetings and related activity.

The network will host four meetings over 12 months. The first meeting was in Leeds in November, with the second taking place in Cambridge last month.  If you missed the meetings you can catch up on activity by reading our storify or watching the seminars.    Follow us on Twitter: @obesity_network.

By Michelle Morris, University Academic Fellow. Twitter: @drshellm  @obesity_network.

 

This blog was originally posted on the University of Leeds – CSAP Blog.

 

How useful is Big Data in the fight against Obesity?

International experts came together in Cambridge just before Easter to explore how Big Data can be used to tackle obesity and obesity related diseases.  The audience of 60 consisted of academic and non-academic experts, with wide ranging interests including big data, nutrition, health and geography.

The second of four meetings, this meeting focused on Data, Methods and Models.  The morning session included presentations from network members followed by a panel discussion.

Presentations

Dr James Woodcock (CEDAR) & Dr Robin Lovelace (CDRC) discussed modelling and visualising large datasets to guide active policies. They presented a case study on the new Propensity to Cycle Tool, to demonstrate how novel forms of data and Big Data can serve public health through promotion of active travel.

Key points covered during the presentation included the issue that information needed for understanding travel behaviour and health are not at consistent geographies (Dr James Woodcock) and the need to join up public health/obesity research with training in coding, i.e. if you want to ‘do’ big data, you need to know how to code (Dr Robin Lovelace).

Dr Darren Greenwood from the University of Leeds covered interpreting results from analysis with Big Data and provided a number of interesting examples from epidemiology.  He covered the common pitfalls and encouraged the audience to think about what makes data ‘big’.

Prof Adam Drewnowski, Director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the School of Public Health provided an international perspective on Big Data and the Obesity Epidemic.  He explained why the commonly presented state level obesity maps are not helpful and presented some interesting findings on the links between property prices and obesity.

The presentations and videos are available here.

Panel Discussion

Dr Seraphim Alvanides, Dr Daniel Lewis and Dr Sandy Tubeuf joined the morning’s speakers for a lively panel discussion before lunch, exploring the practicalities of using Big Data in the fight against obesity.  Key points covered in the panel session include:

  • Issues around identification of subjects in data analysis with GPS coordinates discussed. Discussion included methods of analysis and the importance of masking location in code which is shared in addition to results which are disseminated. The importance of confidentiality and consent where applicable was highlighted.
  • There is chance of generating erroneous inferences from ‘big data’ if robust analysis methods are not used. Discussion focussed around whether it is better to be ‘roughly right’ rather than ‘precisely wrong’.
  • ‘Big Data’ invites opportunity for ‘hypothesis free’ research. Discussion followed around the need for a priori hypotheses and whether ‘hypothesis free’ analysis is good research practice or just a ‘fishing expedition’.

Attendees took advantage of the winter sun and took a short walk around Cambridge, before ending the day with a networking lunch.

Dr Pablo Monsivais, who chaired the meeting commented on the success of the day: ‘I was pleased to see such a high level of interest and engagement from the audience, over half of which were not network members.  We need fresh, joined-up approaches to tackling obesity and the talks and workshop illustrated how this strategic network is enabling important intellectual and methodological advances using big data.”

If you weren’t able to join us, you can follow the day via the Meeting Storify Board.

The next meeting will take place in London on Wednesday 18 May 2016.  The meeting will follow a similar format but will focus on Novel Results & Visualisation. Book online.

We’ve launched a new map – Top jobs across the UK

Our latest interactive visual maps the most popular employment for each of the 220000 statistical small areas* within the UK.

Put together by our senior research associate Oliver O’Brien, this map re-uses the “top result” technique utilised in all other CDRC Maps.

Explore it yourself – Top jobs across the UK.

For background information on the map, read Oliver O’Brien’s blog post. 

We’d be interested to hear your feedback, connect with us on twitter:@cdrc_uk or facebook.com/cdrcuk. Alternatively, email: info@cdrc.ac.uk.

* Known as Output Areas in Great Britain and Small Areas in Northern Ireland.

Samsung join panel for CDRC Sustainability Webinar


Wouter van Tol
Director of Sustainability and Citizenship
Samsung Electronics Europe.

We are pleased to announce that Wouter van Tol will be joining our panel of expert speakers for the CDRC Big Data and Sustainability webinar on Monday 25 April, 13.00 – 14.00.

Wouter van Tol is Director of Sustainability and Citizenship at Samsung Electronics Europe.  One of his responsibilities is to lead a programme to improve the digital skills of 400,000 young people across 28 European countries.  He is also closely involved in social and environmental impact in the supply chain.

Wouter has a PGCert in Sustainable Business from the University of Cambridge and an MA from University of Twente in his home country, the Netherlands.  He lives in York.

During the webinar, Wouter will be discussing Samsung’s SmartThings Hub which connects devices, enables sharing of content, but also enables real time monitoring of energy use from anywhere using a smartphone.

Wouter commented: “Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies that redefine the worlds of TV’s, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, cameras, digital appliances, printers, medical equipment, network systems, and semiconductor and LED solutions.

We are also leading in the Internet of Things space with the open platform SmartThings, our broad range of smart devices, and through proactive cross-industry collaboration.”

Samsung employ 319,000 people across 84 countries with annual sales of US $196 billion.  To discover more, and for the latest news, feature articles and press material, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at news.samsung.com

We look forward to working with Wouter and Samsung on this exciting project.  Register now to reserve your place.

 

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

By Wouter van Tol and Prof William Young

As a fully-connected world develops, smart technology will help reduce energy use and promote more sustainable lifestyles.

The “internet of things” (IoT) is the embedding of infrastructure, devices and buildings with sensors and electronics to communicate with each other and users. Through connected devices, big data gives us knowledge to better manage our health, resources, infrastructures and other efficiencies.

The interesting thing about IoT is that it is still very much in its infancy, but growing up at mind-boggling speed. We simply cannot imagine all the possibilities yet, just as we were unable to imagine many the possibilities of a mobile phone say 10 years ago.

Many leading companies are working hard to develop products that can be fully interconnected over the next few years. No doubt, some of the biggest benefits to consumers (and to society!) will be developed by 2020, even if they are hard to imagine right now.

From a sustainability point of view we are exploring a host of ideas at CDRC. What will the impact be of the “smart home” on energy use and cost, and how can smart homes enable elderly people to live independently for longer – and thereby save healthcare systems money? How can “smart cities” help to manage traffic flows better? How can IoT enable supply chains to become more transparent at a lower cost?

We can imagine consumers being better able to control their household’s energy use not only for heating and cooling but also in terms of use of appliances and devices. This can lead to households being smartly connected to the wider energy grids where appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and electric cars use power when there is grid capacity.

This is where potentially larger emissions reduction could be achieved through reduce in energy wastage. Smart hub devices can connect devices, enable sharing of content, but also real-time monitoring of energy use from anywhere using a smartphone.

In addition, connecting the autonomous or self-drive car to city transport systems could help better management of traffic and make journeys more efficient. Of course the data collected by these sensors and electronics will help us to understand how consumers behave and create opportunities for nudges towards sustainable lifestyles.

This of course has to be balanced with the energy use of IoT sensors and electronics as well as the resource use and recycling of the equipment. Without this the benefits of IoT could be reduced.

A final important point is this. Will the world have enough people with the skills to grasp the sustainability opportunities hidden in all that data? Currently there are five million young people unemployed in Europe. Yet at the same time, there are more than 800,000 ICT vacancies. Why? Part of the reason is the digital skills gap; young people are currently leaving university without gaining the digital skills that employers are crying out for.

The CDRC is investing significant resources to develop data science capability in the UK, through training and education, but also through collaborative projects with companies such as Samsung, who are also investing in the digital skills of 6-24 year olds across 28 European countries.


 

Free big data webinar: Monday 25th April 13.00 BST – CDRC and Innovation Forum webinar on big data and sustainability.

With: William Young, professor of sustainability and business, University of Leeds; Chris Brown, senior director of sustainable business, Asda; Andy Peloe, concept manager, Callcredit; Wouter van Tol, director of sustainability and citizenship, Samsung.  Register now to reserve your place. 

Wouter van Tol is director of sustainability and citizenship at Samsung Electronics Europe. He leads a programme to improve the digital skills of 400,000 young people across 28 European countries and is closely involved in social and environmental impact in the supply chain.

Prof William Young is a co-investigator at the CDRC. He also leads the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, UK. 

Is this giant rat really 4-foot? CDRC explores.

CDRC researcher Oliver O’Brien channelled his research skills into exploring whether the image of a man holding aloft a giant rat was infact ‘giant’ after all.

Gas Engineer Tony Smith (pictured) claimed last week to have come across a large rat in Hackney, London and said at the time: “I’ve got a cat and a Jack Russell and it was bigger than both those…”.

Our researcher was not convinced; having done the maths he explained to The Guardian newspaper that in order for the rat to be 4-ft, the man in the picture would have to be 12-ft tall – which was highly unlikely.

The full article, including Oliver’s full explanation as to why this may be a case of image trickery, can be located in The Guardian.

Big Data & Health – Get Involved

 

MM

Michelle Morris
Director of the ESRC Strategic Network for Obesity

The Big Data revolution has been embraced by health researchers and professionals. The new data horizon provides exciting opportunities to utilise new data and methods to ultimately improve the health of our nation – and in fact the world. In the health arena big data analytics has the chance to make a real impact on society, through research which informs policy and improves practice.

I’m thrilled to see so many Big Data & Health related opportunities coming up in the next few months.  The events aren’t just restricted to hearing about what is happening either, there are lots of chances for you to get involved, explore the available data and join the fight against the health issues affecting the UK.


Health Innovation Lab – 27 February (Leeds)

Student Datalabs will be running a data driven innovation lab at the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics later this month.  It’s a great hands on opportunity for students to learn new data skills whilst working on health problems, specifically health inequalities and Type 2 Diabetes in Yorkshire.
Find out more


Obesity Network Seminar – 16 March (Cambridge)

The second meeting of the Obesity Network is open to everyone and will focus on Data, Methods & Models.  We’ve got some interesting presentations lined up including:

  • Modelling and visualising large and complex datasets to guide active travel policies
  • Interpreting results from analysis with big data: examples from epidemiology
  • Big Data and the Obesity Epidemic

Find out more

 

Big Data and the Obesity Epidemic – 17 March (Leeds)

Adam Drewnowski, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Washington will be talking about Big Data and the Obesity Epidemic.  The seminar will be the first of a series of Big Data seminars held at the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics.
Find out more


Webinar: Exploring diet and obesity in children using geodemographic classifications – 6 April (online)

I’ll be giving an overview of the study I conducted exploring social and spatial determinants of diet and obesity in children at a local area level in two regions of the UK.  I’ll discuss the findings and focus on the benefits of combining multiple datasets to generate greater insight into applied societal challenges.
Find out more


New Health Datasets Available

The CDRC have just made two new health related datasets available to researchers.  There is Staff Health Survey Data from Heart Research UK and a Synthetic Population, both of which are available via application to the Centre.


Funded PhD Opportunity

We currently have a funded PhD opportunity available – Generating a Leeds Geodemographic classification: applications in policy, commerce and health.  The appointed student will have the chance to work with our partners Callcredit and Leeds City Council.  The deadline for applications is 5 March 2016.
Find out more

You can find out more about Michelle’s work with the ESRC Strategic Network for Obesity on the CDRC website or via twitter.

Ever wondered where your ancestors met their Valentine?

A new website, ‘Named’, created by researchers from UCL’s Department of Geography predicts where lovers met (or could potentially meet) using surnames.

The website, which is part of a wider research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), invites users to enter two surnames. It then generates a ‘heat map’ of the geographic concentrations of the two names overlain on top of one another, thus identifying areas where the couple most probably met.

Director of the Consumer Data Research Centre, Professor Paul Longley, is leading the project. The data used for the website comes from the Consumer Data Research Centre.

He said: “The website is a quirky start of our research project which is looking into whether our surnames are linked to our geographical locations – something which has been long perceived. It is known that many names remain surprisingly concentrated in specific parts of the UK, and this project helps us extend our understanding of name geography to combinations of names too when we enter relationships.”

Paul said the study so far shows that on average surnames have not moved far in distance over the last 700 years

“Most Anglo Saxon family names came into common usage between the 12th and 14th centuries, and were first coined in particular parts of the country. What is interesting is that most individuals do not move far from their ancestral family homes and so, 700 or more years later, most names can still be associated with particular localities. So if your Valentine is named ‘Rossall’, for example, it is still about 40 times more likely that you met him or her in the environs of Blackpool than in Central London.

“This doesn’t work for all names, however: the geography of many popular family names (like Smith or Brown) is much more evenly spread, although even popular names like Jones, Williams or Davies still have strong regional connotations.

“Different patterns hold for names imported from abroad over the last 60 years or so. Many of these names remain concentrated in major cities and towns, although the overall pattern of such names is becoming more dispersed as migrants assimilate into UK society.”

He added: “With all the current focus on population migration, it is remarkable to see that most individuals and families stay put throughout the generations. As a consequence it is interesting to reflect that names are still often strong indicators of kinship and regional identity.”

Data scientist Oliver O’Brien, who is part of the project team, added: “The maps on our website make predictions based upon geographic patterning, and we are really interested to learn whether we get things right.”

Users of the website are invited to feedback to the researchers whether they really are able to predict the locations at which romance blossomed – email your feedback to n.vij@ucl.ac.uk.

*This article is an edited version of the original press release created by the Economic & Social Research Council. For original press release:

 

How can big data help deliver sustainability strategies?

Save the date: Monday 25th April 13.00 BST – CDRC and Innovation Forum webinar on big data and sustainability.

With: William Young, professor of sustainability and business, University of Leeds; Chris Brown, senior director of sustainable business, Asda; Andy Peloe, concept manager, Callcredit; Wouter van Tol, director of sustainability and citizenship, Samsung. 

Register your interest to attend.


 

The rapid growth of “big data” presents companies with real opportunities to improve business performance. Here are ten

Over the last few years there has been much talk about how so-called “big data” is the future and if you are not exploiting it your company is losing its competitive advantage.

Well luckily for sustainability professionals, we have all been using types of big data for a long time, such as energy flows in companies, environmental lifecycle assessments of products, greenhouse gas emissions reporting, waste recycling indicators, resources use balances, transport systems and so on.

Data and information is the day-to-day business of sustainability professionals and they are well qualified to take advantage of big data to better understand the environmental aspects or risks of their companies, product or service.

So what is there in the latest wave of enthusiasm on big data to help organisations achieve sustainability strategies and competitive advantage?

Data growth 

There is better data breakdown and new forms of data such as sales data, loyalty card data, social media, product sensors, new monitors and mobile phone data. There are lots of these data, often in real time and there are many ways to analyse and model them. This is nicely summarised in the famous “four Vs” of big data from IBM (volume, velocity, variety and veracity).

I think there are ten opportunities to use big data for sustainability professionals.

(1) Gaining greater detail behind global sustainability performance indicators. For example energy use by using smart meters on production lines, in retailers, on products or in people’s homes can produce a better understanding of energy use in the system.

(2) Accessing supply chain data more readily. There is an opportunity from being able to access data from global suppliers up and down the supply chain more readily, in a timelier fashion and with better accuracy. This will help to make better decisions over product/service changes knowing the associated sustainability implications. As climate change impacts global supply chains, this data may help adaptation and resilience of supply.

(3) Gaining an insight in supply chain logistics and customer transport habits. There is now the ability to use mobile phone data to identify patterns in transport networks, giving the opportunity for better planning for more efficient use of fuel and reduced congestion. This may also provide consumers better opportunities to change to cleaner forms of transportation.

(4) Predicting changes in behaviour from social media. This is one of the most talked about aspects of big data and yet the most technically difficult. Much of social media data is unstructured and in picture, pixels or abbreviated language. But there are opportunities to see how individuals react to an emerging sustainability issue or a new technology.

(5) Social media is a good way for sustainability professionals to identify up and coming sustainability issues from their own stakeholders. These may be key local NGOs, community leaders, political leaders, suppliers, competitors, employees as well as customers. Identifying opinion formers is vital for filtering the volume of social media.

(6) Customer behaviour with products and services. As companies try to influence consumers to reduce the environmental impacts on the use phase of products and services, getting feedback on the effectiveness of these interventions is important for future strategy.

(7) Transparency to customers and NGOs. Access by consumers to the data behind product eco-labels, or working condition audit results from the factories producing their products, is important for confidence. Better presentation, accuracy and timeliness of this is an advantage.

(8) Better marketing or targeting of greener products, services and corporate sustainability programmes. Being able to better segment and directly contact potential customers with personalised promotions is already being developed. This can help in the sustainability arena as well.

(9) Interaction with consumers and stakeholders in the shared or collaborative economy. The growing ability to share resources, between companies and consumers has been facilitated by social media. Entrepreneurs are already in this space with apps allowing sharing of food leftovers or power tools. There are great opportunities for this to be further developed reducing the material flow though society using different business models.

(10) Growing emphasis on smart cities, combined with the development of “mega cities” where the majority of the world population may live. Smart energy, water, waste and transport grids are just one area, but the buildings being able to heat and cool more smartly is another opportunity.

Don’t get lost!

There are some difficulties with big data that sustainability professionals need to be aware.

Firstly, getting lost in the enormous amount of data is easy, so having objectives or research questions is essential. Secondly, a few big corporations have been quick to jump on correlations between different data sets without common sense kicking in quick enough to identify that there cannot be a causation. Finally, there are the ethics of the privacy of individuals and communities, which need to be protected even if the data is publicly available.

Overall there is much here for sustainability professionals to work on and to improve the sustainability performance of their company’s operations, products, services, supply chains and even customers. However, as much data as possible needs to be open access for consumers, researchers, local communities and innovators for big data to have the biggest benefit for people and planet.


 

This article was originally published on www.innovation-forum.co.uk