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ESRC’s Bruce Jackson on the CDRC

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the largest funder of social and economic research in the UK, supporting high quality, independent research helping to address some of the major key societal challenges we face today.  The ESRC Big Data Network brings together a series of highly innovative ESRC investments seeking to facilitate access to a greater range and variety of data to support high-quality social science.  In making new forms of data available for research purposes, the ESRC Big Data Network has the potential to fundamentally transform the social sciences.

Led by two world class research teams based at UCL and the University of Leeds, the Consumer Data Research Centre has created a cutting-edge physical and virtual infrastructures which facilitate access to, and linking of, business and local government data in safe and secure settings.  The Centre is at the forefront of ESRC’s work to open closed, proprietary datasets for research purposes and is demonstrating and exploring new and novel forms of partnership working with data owners which both support world class social science and deliver real value for our partners.  By working through the methodological, ethical, legal and technical challenges associated with accessing, curating and analysing these datasets, the Centre is providing a fundamental foundation upon which the future of innovative, impactful social science can be built.

James Cheshire live at Cartographic Summit 2016

CDRC’s Assistant Director Dr James Cheshire will be delivering a talk at this year’s ‘Cartographic Summit: The Future of Mapping’, to be held in Redlands from 8 to 10 February.

Titled ‘Lightning Talk on Data’, James’ talk will be live-streamed on Monday 8 February at 17.30pm UK time (GMT) and 09.30am (PST).

To access this and other live streams’ for the event:
Follow the link here 
Enter the password ‘carto.summ’ when prompted.

The summit aims to explore research, innovation and strategic thinking to support cartographic needs as new data, information and infographics revolutionize mapping . The intent is to set a marker for understanding common challenges from a range of perspectives in and outside the traditional cartographic communities; to draw together different ways of thinking and working; and to build bridges across the many communities in the mapmaking and visualization fields.

For those unable to tune into the live stream, keep track of our website as we will aim to post a video of James’ talk in the future.

For the full agenda click here.

For twitter coverage visit twitter.com, hashtag #cartosummit.

 

 

 

 

 

Using Big Data to Identify Outbreaks of Food Poisoning

 

In October 2015, I started a part-time PhD in the Consumer Data Research Centre on the topic of Spatial Data Analytics for Food Safety.   This is a White Rose DTC project which forms part of the Big Data and Food Safety Network, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). I’m roughly three months into what is going to be a long (five year) journey and although I’m trying to keep things general at the moment, I’m beginning to have a vague idea of where this project might take me.

Every year there are around 500 000 known cases of food poisoning in the UK and a further 10 million cases of gastrointestinal illnesses which may be food related. As the NHS recommends that people recover from mild-bouts of food poisoning at home, without visiting their GP, the true number of cases is hard to estimate via traditional methods. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is a case partner for this project and they are particularly interested in how big data and social media can be used to more effectively monitor cases and outbreaks of food poisoning in the UK.

Source: Salidek et al. (2013)

Source: Salidek et al. (2013)

 

In the US, a number of studies have proved that Twitter and other online data sources can be used to undertake syndromic surveillance and identify whether people are suffering from known symptoms. Although the majority of these studies are Influenza focussed, the methodologies are also relevant for monitoring food-poisoning. These studies prove that a language model can be used to retrieve food-related messages from Twitter and, through natural language processing, identify if the author is suffering from a food-borne illness or not. In some cases, geo-located Tweets can be tracked to a specific restaurant location which is particularly useful for monitoring outbreaks of food poisoning, where more than one person has been infected at the same origin. Online restaurant reviews are somewhat simpler to process than Tweets, as they are restaurant specific and require less filtering. An author will often specify the type of food eaten which may be useful for identifying new food pathogen vehicles.

The timely reporting of foodborne illness is an essential component in avoiding a large-scale epidemic.  Social media data and online restaurant reviews can be collected in near-real time and are therefore much timelier than traditional data sources such as GP visits or FSA inspection reports which can take up to two weeks to process.  Despite their timeliness, information reported via Twitter and online reviews needs to be handled carefully. Food-borne pathogens have extremely varied incubation periods (typically between 1 and 28 days) making it difficult to attribute illness to a specific food establishment. For this reason, these data sources may not be suitable for monitoring food-borne illness caused by certain pathogens.

I’m still knee-deep in literature at the moment but the broad objectives of this project are:

  • To evaluate the availability and quality of data from a variety of sources relating to demographics, movement patterns, social media messages, the quality and performance of facilities, and health outcomes;
  • To construct spatial-temporal models of food safety across a country or region and to assess the effectiveness and robustness of that model;
  • To explore the utility of the models as a means for targeting scarce resources and to suggest other means for the extraction of value from the application of this research.

In the next few months, I hope to start collecting online restaurant review data to carry out some preliminary analysis against the FSA inspection data. Watch this space!

Rachel Oldroyd is a part time PhD student at the Consumer Data Research Centre,  she also teaches the Face to Face and Distance Learning MSc GIS courses in her role at the Centre for Spatial Analysis and Policy (CSAP) at the University of Leeds.

 

CDRC in the News

We’ve had a busy few months since we launched the new CDRC website and datastore in October.  You may have seen some of our work in various regional and national newspapers.  Here is a summary of some of the media highlights:

The Guardian
How cities grow: the age of houses – mapped

Guardian

Timeout
How Londoners commute to work

timeout

ESRC Britain in 2016 Magazine
The CDRC featured in the ‘Retail Revival?’ article in the recent Britain in 2016 magazine.  Copies are available to buy at WH Smith.

Britain In

The Bristol Post
Unique maps chart history of housing development in Bristol

Bristol

Midlands Express & Star
Average Black Country house prices vary by £200k

Midlands

 

Where do people cycle to work? Popular cycle commuter routes visualised

Research funded by the Department for Transport illustrates where the most popular commuter routes for cycling are around the country.

CDRC researcher Robin Lovelace is part of the team developing the Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT), an open source transport planning system developed by academics at the Universities of Leeds, Cambridge, Westminster and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Maps produced by the PCT are shown below for Leeds, London and Cambridge to demonstrate where the most popular routes are from the 2011 Census. Only the top 10 most cycled ‘desire lines’ are shown, in the maps below.  The tool also provides evidence on where there is most potential for growth (not shown).

The PCT aims to assist the decision of where to build new cycle infrastructure such two way cycle paths in place of a lane for motorised traffic, as is happening in parts of London.  This should make cycle commuting a more attractive option nationwide, building on research into scenarios of growth in cycling at the city level.

cycling commute

The maps below, generated by an early prototype version of the PCT, show popular cycling routes in Leeds, London and Cambridge to provide a taster of the types of route that are favoured by commuter cyclists.

The types of routes cycle commuters use vary from city to city and in the future the geographical distribution of cycling to work could shift as cycling grows as a form of transport.

The thickness of the line represents which desire lines were most cycled in 2011 and the shade of the zones represent how much cycling there is in each zone: the more yellow the zone, the more people living in that zone cycle to work.

Leeds

Leeds is a ‘mono-centric’ city, meaning that the most cycled routes head to the city centre. Otley Road is one of the most cycled routes in the city as illustrated by the thick line from Far Headingly in the northwest to city centre and the University of Leeds. Interestingly the most popular commuter routes in 2011 were all from the North of the city centre, raising the question: what are the barriers to cycling in South Leeds?

Leeds cycling

 

London

Unsurprisingly in London all the most popular routes head to the City of London. Surprisingly, some of the most popular commutes are more than 5 km in Euclidean distance (or ‘as the crow flies’) with 95 people saying they commute the 8 km from Clapham Junction to the City of London in the 2011 Census.

London cycling

 

Cambridge

Cambridge is the city with the highest proportion of cycle commuters in the UK, with 18% cycling to work in the 2011 Census. In Cambridge, the commute from the North and East of the City Centre are the most popular:

cambridge cycling

Future versions of the PCT will increase the ‘geographical resolution’ of the tool (making the zones smaller), analyse which road sections should be prioritised for cycling and explore where there is high potential for other types of trip, such as cycling to school.  This is linked to wider research to better understand how to build more cycle friendly cities at the participating universities.

Interested in the age of your property? CDRC Maps might give you a clue

CDRC Maps has launched a new, interactive map that indicates the age of properties across England and Wales.

Using the ‘dwellings ages’ dataset published by the Valuation Office Agency and the house price summaries from the ONS, CDRC researcher Oliver O’Brien has combined both these open datasets’* into a record on CDRC Data, then mapped both the prices and ages data on CDRC Maps.

Oliver has made use of a color scheme to track the changes in age: grey = old, yellow = 1960s, red = very new.

This feature has generated significant interest across social media. Click here to access the map and have a play yourself.

For more information on the methods used to create this, visit Oliver’s blog post.

*Background mapping is based on Ordnance Survey Open Data.

Public dialogues on the (re)use of private sector data for social research

Earlier this year, CDRC Director’s Paul Longley and Mark Birkin participated in a series of public dialogue events in order to better understand the public’s views on the use and re-use of private sector data for social research.

The purpose of these dialogues was to inform the work of the CDRC, the Urban Big Data Centre and the Business and Local Government Data Research Centre.

The Aims

The aims of the public dialogues were:

  • to explore public views and related concerns about key aspects of the Data Research Centres’ work towards enabling access to private sector data for social research
  • to start creating a language around private sector data and access to and use of these for research purposes that is meaningful and accessible to the public

The Findings

Overall, the dialogue demonstrated that there is wide public support for the use and re-use of private sector data for social research. Access to information about the Data Centre processes alleviated a lot of the concerns people had initially around security and privacy. An increased appreciation of the benefits of social research for everyone in society meant that a trade-off took place between concerns and perceived risks of the use of private sector data in favour of research that leads to improvements in policy and services.

Next Steps

The CDRC, along with our colleagues at Urban Big Data Centre and the Business and Local Government Data Research Centre, will be working with the ESRC to take forward the findings and recommendations of the public dialogues to improve communication on the work that we do with private sector data for social research that can ultimately benefit society.

Further Information

The full report and further information on the public dialogue process can be found on the ESRC Website.

CDRC’s ‘jumper & hat’ competition raises cash for charity

The CDRC UCL team have thrown themselves into the festive season.

On Thursday 17 December 2015 they, along with the Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering team (CEGE), participated in a ‘Jumper & hat’ competition; this involved donating  some cash to wear a xmas jumper and/or hat, with the winner of most outrageous outfit able to give proceedings to a charity of their preference. There were some interesting jumpers/hats on display, with Guy Lansley (pictured below) eventually declared winner for his very amusing turkey hat.

In total, the CDRC and CEGE raised £114.80. Guy selected Centrepoint as the charity to donate proceedings to.

GuyWinnerOfComp-min
Guy Lansley, winner of CDRC’s festive competition

 

Xmas2015All
Members of the CDRC team based at UCL

Using data-driven artwork to raise funds for charity

On 1 December 2015, CDRC’s Deputy Director James Cheshire and researcher Oliver O’Brien raised £250 for the development and disaster relief charity Article 25, in an auction held at the Royal Institution of British Architects (RIBA).

Each year, the charity places a 10×10 grid over a part of London and invites architects and artists to explore the 100 resulting squares allocated to them. This year the theme was “Drawing the River”, with artists exploring the role the River Thames in central London plays in shaping the city.

James and Oliver were allocated a 10×10 square near Lambeth Bridge, where they made use of the Environment Agency’s newly opened archive of LIDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEMs) and combined this with geographical data, GIS and other software to produce their final piece; a “data driven” work of art showcasing the area around Lambeth Bridge in a different light.

Their final piece revealed some interesting features-for more on what these were, and for associated images, read Oliver O’Brien’s post

See also:
http://www.article-25.org/

Related content:
James Cheshire

 

CDRC Director ‘Head Judge’ at GeoCom2015

CDRC’s UCL Director, Paul Longley, delivered a key note talk about the CDRC and awarded a prize in his capacity as Head Judge at the ‘GeoCom: Resilient Futures 2015′ conference, held 23rd-25th November in Warwickickshire.

Supported by the Association of Geographic Information (AGI), the two day event bought together experts from across the retail, government and private sectors’ to discuss the potential of geospatial data to resolve current issues. Particular focus was on how the geospatial market sector delivers value and harnesses potential for innovation.

As Head Judge for The AGI Award for Excellence in Education which was sponsored by Canal and Rivers Trust,  Paul adjudged ‘imap: delivering GIS in schools’ as winner and, along with the other judges, stated: “In utilising undergraduate students to help teach secondary teachers, both students and teachers benefit. A particularly refreshing aspect to the nomination is the way in which it has created and grown an active network of enthusiastic foot soldiers, intent upon promoting the value of GI.”

Paul Longley’s talk was well received on twitter – for more #geocom.

Further information about the award and judging criteria can be found here.

Paul Longley delivering his keynote at GeoCom 2015.
Paul Longley delivering his keynote at GeoCom 2015.