New services help researchers access smart data on healthy and sustainable places
Faculty of Environment researchers will lead a £6m data service that helps researchers use smart data to better understand the health and sustainability of places.
Smart Data Research UK (SDR UK) announced £4.8 million funding for the Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service (HASP), with additional support from the University of Leeds.
HASP will collaborate with three other data services as part of a £22 million investment by SDR UK to support researchers across the UK to access new smart data.
Smart data – data from everyday interactions with the digital world, like mobile apps, navigation systems, social media and shopping – lets us look at and learn about societal challenges.
HASP will enable safe access to smart data for research about place. It will support researchers to understand local economies, health, lifestyles and transport from a new perspective.
We can discover new ways to understand the most pressing challenges of our time
Professor Nik Lomax at the School of Geography is the project lead for HASP. He explains the importance of place in smart data research:
“Places frame how people live their lives – they are settings where we work, shop, socialise, and move; they influence our decisions, lifestyles, and health; and represent the coming together of a diverse set of intersecting social systems.
“Places are also equally recognised as central to the future of UK policymaking.
“By combining smart data and place, we become less constrained by conventional geographies and traditional practices and can discover new ways to understand the most pressing challenges of our time – health and sustainability.”
HASP will be led by Professor Nik Lomax, Professor Michelle Morris (School of Food Science and Nutrition), Professor Ed Manley (School of Geography) and Professor Mark Birkin (School of Geography).
Researchers using the HASP service will benefit from the team’s well-established data-sharing relationships with companies in retail, business, mobility, infrastructure and exciting new partnerships.
The service will build on the success of the Consumer Data Research Centre, which has been led by the HASP team at Leeds since 2014 in collaboration with University College London, University of Liverpool and University of Oxford.
Smart Data Research UK – Centres of Excellence
HASP will be one of four SDR UK data services: Imagery Data Service; Smart Data Donation Service; Geographic Data Service; and Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service.
Together, they will:
- Enable safe access to smart data.
- Develop user-friendly services that support research and collaboration across disciplines.
- Ensure responsible use of data.
- Build capacity within the research community.
- Enable impactful discoveries with smart data.
Joe Cuddeford, Director of Smart Data Research UK, said:
“These new data services are a major step forward in our mission to unlock the power of smart data for society.
“By providing researchers with good services and support, and access to a wider range of high-quality data, we are empowering them to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing the UK today, from climate change to public health. The services we announce today are the part of an exciting programme of strategic investment in smart data.
“There are much more exciting things to come for our incredible community.”
Find out more
Find out more about the Imagery Data Service; Smart Data Donation Service; Geographic Data Service; and Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service on the Smart Data Research UK website.
SDR UK is part of the UKRI Infrastructure Fund, which supports the facilities, equipment and resources that are essential for researchers and innovators to do ground-breaking work. SDR UK is managed by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of its data infrastructure strategy.
