On 30 June 2016 we will officially launch the SmartStreetSensor Project in a partnership with the Local Data Company and University College London (UCL), with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

The SmartStreetSensor Project is the most comprehensive study of High Street footfall patterns across Great Britain to date. It will allow us to understand how our high streets are used, how they are changing and what actually impacts footfall patterns.

We are launching this initiative to build on our detailed knowledge of how retail places are changing by combining this with footfall traffic patterns. By doing this, it will provide the most accurate picture of the relationship between places and people and what determines their success. This is the holy grail for retailers and landlords alike.

Official press release due shortly. For further enquiries contact marketing@localdatacompany.com or info@cdrc.ac.uk.

 

A case study of our Output Area Classification Data has featured in a report by The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC). Titled ‘Preserving Transactional Data’ the reports are commissioned after consultation among DPC members about shared priorities and challenges in digital preservation, are commissioned from experts and are thoroughly scrutinized by peers before being released. The authors are asked to provide reports that are informed, current, concise and balanced and that lower the barriers to participation in digital preservation.

The reports are a distinctive and lasting contribution to the dissemination of good practice in digital preservation.  The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) inputs were provided by our Project Manager, Sarah Sheppard, and Deputy Director, Alex Singleton.

The report is published by the DPC in association with Charles Beagrie Ltd. Neil Beagrie, Director of Consultancy at Charles Beagrie Ltd, was commissioned to act as principal investigator for, and managing editor of, this Series in 2011. He has been further supported by an Editorial Board drawn from DPC members and peer reviewers who comment on text prior to release: William Kilbride (Chair), Janet Delve (University of Portsmouth), Marc Fresko (Inforesight), Sarah Higgins (University of Aberystwyth), Tim Keefe (Trinity College Dublin), and Dave Thompson (Wellcome Library).

To access the full report. 

Our UCL based Deputy Director, James Cheshire, spoke at the Earl Conference 2015 on ‘The power of maps with R’. Organised by Mango Solutions the EARL is an exciting, cross-sector conference dedicated to the real business usage of R, where two days are devoted to the most innovative R implementations by the world’s leading practitioners.

James’ video presentation is now available to view, where he provides a fascinating insight into the world of making maps with R and the creation of his book ‘London: The Information Capital’.

The CDRC, along with Shop Direct, Sea Level Research, the Local Data Company (LDC) and Red Ninja Studios successfully hosted a hackathon in Liverpool on Saturday 4 June.

The hackathon theme was ‘Why monitor footfall’, with the LDC making available footfall test data for Market Harborough via the CDRC’s datastore. This data was obtained using 12 footfall sensors situated in the town centre.

With approximately 40 hackers in attendance, the day kicked off with breakfast and a networking session. This was followed by introductions from Simon Holgate, CEO and founder of Sea Level Research, Alex Singleton, Deputy Director of CDRC and Matthew Doubleday, Head of Data Science at Shop Direct.

The day was facilitated by Nadina Osmani and Adam Kenyani of Red Ninja, who allocated the hackathon teams with representatives from local universities, Shop Direct, Sea Level Research, Red Ninja and local ML AI enthusiasts. The hackathon kicked off in full swing, with a brief break for pizzas, before the hackers continued.

Winners were announced in the final session, judged by Lee Omar, CEO of Red Ninja. The winning team (pictured below, with Alex) were selected on their ability to provide unique insight to the footfall data by linking in with other available datasets. Their team work skills’ were also highly appreciated.

The winning team were presented with individual trophies from Red Ninja along with Shop Direct vouchers; runners up received amazon vouchers courtesy of Sea Level Research. As special prizes the CDRC provided a hardback copy of their Deputy Director James Cheshire’s co-authored book, ‘The Information Capital’, as well as Chris Brunsdon & Alex Singleton’s popular book ‘Geocomputation’. Each attendee also received an “honorary ninja” badge from Red Ninja as well as a copy of MOPEKS by Bob Cory.

 

 

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.

Our response

The CDRC, along with our colleagues at Urban Big Data Centre and the Business and Local Government Data Research Centre, have worked closely with the Economic and Social Research Council (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. Our official response is now available here. Additionally, responses by the Urban Big Data Centre and the Business and Local Government Data Research Centre can be found at UBDC  and BLG. 

Further Information

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

The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC), in conjunction with ‘BigData4ATM’ and ‘insight’, will co-host an international event in Amsterdam on 21 September 2016. Submit an abstract by July 15 2016.
Submission of contributed talks are accepted as an extended abstract (max. 2 pages). The abstract in a txt or pdf format should be done via Easychair at this link.

Submissions will be evaluated and selected by the Program Committee members, based on the adherence to the workshop theme, originality and scientific quality. A non-exhaustive list of topics to which particular attention will be paid includes:

• Methods and tools for the exploitation of new sources of spatial and temporal data, both for real time management and for longer term strategic planning of urban infrastructure and services (transport, energy, communications, tourism…).
• ICT-driven social and behavioural changes and their impact on location and activity patterns in cities.
• Modelling of the coupling between short-term and long-term urban dynamics.
• Consumer data as a proxy for modelling urban networks.
• Interplay between activity-travel patterns and social networks.
• Multiplex and multilayer networks in urban contexts.

Once the selection process is completed, the authors of the accepted abstracts will be notified by e-mail. Please remember that all the participants in the CCS conference or the satellites must register at this link.

Scope and rationale of event:
The pervasive access to information is empowering citizens to make more informed decisions (e.g., regarding their travel behavior, shopping, energy and other resources consumption habits, etc.), as well as leading to new forms of social relationships and to the introduction of new activities such as e-shopping and teleworking. At the same time, the penetration of ICT is turning individuals into passive and/or active ‘sensors’ that produce, exchange and consume an increasing amount of information, generating a variety of heterogeneous data on citizens’ preferences and behavior. As we move, shop, travel, etc., we leave e-footprints informing on our needs, choices and opinions. This feedback loop is modifying urban dynamics, as well as opening new opportunities for understanding such dynamics and developing new approaches to the design and management of urban systems. In recent years, research on the analysis of non-conventional data sources has begun to jump from academia to industry and public administration, and the interest in new data-driven applications and decision-making tools for infrastructure and strategic planning is growing every day both in private and public sectors.

Following a series of successful satellites organised at previous ECCS/CCS events, (UrbanNet2013 at ECCS13, CitiNet 2014 at ECCS14, UrbanNet2015 at NetSci 2015), the objective of the UrbanNet2016 workshop as satellite of the CCS 2016 is to create a space for exchanging state-of-the-art results and innovative ideas on how to address the problems and opportunities opened by smart cities through complex systems theory and methodologies. Particular attention will be devoted to new data-driven approaches for improving the planning and management of urban infrastructures, including land use, transportation, energy and tourism planning, to mention some examples.

 

 

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.

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).

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: 

 

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/.

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?

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?

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?

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?

 

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