UrbanData2Decide

On 17-18 March 2016, hosted by the Malmö University the consortium organized project meeting in Malmö. Aim of the meeting was the discussion and coordination of the last project period: a particular focus was given to the development of different city cases (for London, Copenhagen and Vienna), on which the responsible partners will put their efforts during the upcoming months. In particular, ODI (for the city of London) will focus on the Train Data Demonstrator tool to visualise in different forms the crowd indicator of the train carriages on the London Underground and make intelligent decisions on top of that. ITU (for Copenhagen) will focus more on the development of a so called Instagram map, to visualize pictures and tags related to the city and to support decision makers. Finally, SYNYO (for the city of Vienna) will focus on a so called Emergency Map to represent open data and in a second stage also statistical and social data.

Moreover, during the meeting a particular attention was given to the evaluation that will play a relevant role along with the development. Different methodologies will be adopted and a stakeholder evaluation will also be part of the project, so that real and potential users can provide their feedback.

Workshop on Data Science for Local Government

As one of the major dissemination outcome of UrbanData2Decide and thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Bright (Oxford Internet Institute), a joint workshop between Oxford City Council and the OII will be organized in Oxford in the prestigious Oxford Town Hall on the 27 September 2016.

The motivation for such a venue are multiple: the creative use of large scale data sources (such as social media, mobile phone data and existing administrative records) offers great potential to local government in terms of understanding and forecasting of urban problems, allocation of scarce resources, innovative policy solutions and efficiency savings. Such methods, which are now often referred to under the heading of “data science”, are already widely deployed within the business sector (to tackle issues such as fraud detection or market segmentation). However their adoption within government remains limited. Barriers in terms of technology, skills and access to data exist; there is also a lack of appreciation of exactly what can be done with this type of data, with a need to exchange ideas, proofs of concept, and best practices.

This day long workshop aims to help stimulate the introduction of data science into local government. It will have two main focusses. First, two to three keynotes / panel discussions will be convened which tackle both the general landscape of data science in government and some of the key problems and challenges in its execution (such as contracting, skills and ethics). These discussions will be interspersed with presentations from academics and practitioners who will provide practical examples of data science being put to use in the local government context. There will also be time in the agenda for networking and partnership building to allow attendees to get to know each other. The aim is to have about 50 attendees, of which some 20-30 might give a presentation or contribute to a panel discussion. The aim would be to have a mix of academics and local government practitioners, with selected industry representatives where appropriate.

JPI Event in Amsterdam

On 14th of April 2016 UrbanData2Decide presented a poster at the second JPI Urban Europe Projects Meeting in Amsterdam. The purpose of the meeting was to provide a forum for exchange of all projects in the JPI Urban Europe programme, to gather projects for strategic discussions and to plan coordinated reach out activities, foster consortia spirit and to disseminate results from (nearly) finished projects. The meeting agenda included information from the JPI Urban Europe Management Board on the SRIA implementation plan and support activities, strategic group discussions and project presentations. Target groups were researchers and project partners from JPI Urban Europe pilot calls and ERA-NET Smart Cities and Communities, and representatives from the European Commission and the JPI Urban Europe Management Board, Governing Board, Scientific Advisory Board and Funding Agencies working group. The Projects Meeting was organized back to back with the opening conference of the Dutch EU presidency on the 13th of April.