Summary of RDA Session Wednesday March 26, 2 pm.
For the benefit of first timers, Walter gave an overview of the structure and
functioning of RDA Interest Groups and Working groups and then an overview of the
background on RDA DUDES IG establishment
All participants (approximately 20 from countries including Germany, Canada, UK
Australia and Ireland) gave a quick introduction and why they have interest in this
session on Quality of Life Indicators.
Chris gave a short overview presentation on “AURIN: data and advanced analytical
tools to support smart cities” to set the scene.
The ensuing discussion made the following points:
 Heterogeneous streams of data is the future but we need to know how to
make sense of them across countries and types.
 Need to look at how big data can be harnessed for social science research
(Glasgow is prominent in use of big data).
 Copenhagen is prominent in “citizen science”
 OECD Global Science Forum 2010 report has recommendations on how to
establish large international research infrastructures (see
http://www.oecd.org/sti/sci-tech/47027330.pdf)
 W3C data on the web best practice
(http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Offices/blog/2014/01/23/data-on-the-webbest-practices-working-group-dw-wg/ Armin Haller is the manager of the
W3C Australia Office.
Actions
1. Metadata to comply with ISO 19115
2. Determine quality of data (5 star rating, Originally developed by Tim BernersLee).
Outcomes
1. Strong interest from participants for taking this forward as a WG activity
focusedon “Urban Quality of Life Indicators”
Summary of Thursday March 27
Max Craglia and Greg Foliente gave presentations: “New Indicators for Urban Quality
of Life” and “Smart Cities, Data Services and Urban Quality of Life” respectively.
Max’s presentation summarized the EU’s position on quality of life indicators which
are focused on biophysical elements (climate, forest, water etc) but acknowledges
urban processes have the most impact on these things. . He suggested “social
sensing” (a la remote sensing) as a means of collecting relevant data.
Responses to this presentation included:
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In some countries (eg Canada) have a regional focus, not national and have
good data at municipal level. Many cities have their own portals so there may
be potential for open data platforms. There is a need to improve metadata.
We need to focus on bringing capacity to the local to use the data.
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Most users only interested in a small area such as a postcode, this level is
most relevant/interesting to policy makers.
Difficult to get many types of data at small area level but other presentations
will cover this issue.
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We need to focus on which spatial level is most appropriate.
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Some types of urban indicators may not be beneficial for local populations if
made public, there are ethical considerations (eg could be used for insurance
redlining).
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The term “Quality of Life” is open to misunderstanding; different disciplines
have different perceptions and will vary across individuals. May need a
different term that incorporates subjective wellbeing.
Greg Foliente’s presentation
Used triple bottom line model (economic, environmental, social). Economic and
environmental data relatively easy to get, not so for social. But need to go beyond
this model to include built assets, physical capital, ecological integrity, equity, public
participation, governance (formal and informal).
Provision can be divided into a 3 stage process: data (terms and definitions,
collection and management etc); delivery (interoperability) and decisions. All of
these are more difficult to operationalise for social data which can be
formal/official/public, special surveys, and can be regular (over time) or one off.
Responses included:
 Many local communities have developed good indicators but these are not
included in “Smart Cities”, SC criticized as too technoscientific
 Greg agreed that SC should include local community data.
 QofL deals with relating the subjective and objective; there are now ways of
doig this beyond regression analyses
 Not easy to compare local community indicators, but should not use this as a
reason to exclude them.
 Need to know how physical variables influence subjective variables.
 Need to avoid alienating the group you are trying to help; development of
indicators and provision of data should be bottom up, not top down.
Chris Pettit talked about how we might best develop case study infrastructure
Responses included:
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Concerns about whether “the need to fit within the RDA “box” might
constrain what we are trying to do?” were addressed by pointing out that
RDA is about providing infrastructure, not research.
The first step might be identifying indicators, not comparing cities.
Around 5 indicators was suggested as a starting point using 10 cities.
Include specific environmental indicators suggested - air quality, water
quality and light pollution added to Charter.
Needs to include a "why statement" to describe why this is an important
issue and who it will benefit. Provide rationale, why it is important, and what
is going to be done about it.
Need to state that the minimum set of interoperability will provide a
prototype to evaluated and expanded.
Clarify the wording for sources of data being tested i.e. crowd sourcing,
community sourced, sensors and conventional/administrative data.
Suggestion of addition of industry groups for the target end users, population
change (growth/shrinkage) across time.
Domain agnostic across time or applicability to other communities? Requires
clarification.
European Spatial Observation Network make all urban spatial data indicators
interoperable. All based on administrative data. This project extends how?
Interoperability of different data? Trying to rationalise the sets of indicators
need to show something new that cannot be done. Need to capture existing
and take a subset of indicators and case study cities.
Discussion about subjective and objective data but alignment between these
data are weak and has important methodological implications. Machine
learning techniques etc. Need to be wary of the scope of the project and
possibility of including urban planning and agent based modelling etc.
What is the role of Urban Planning Modelling in here?
Need to keep the project contained and can't do everything.
Where will these data be held? Existing data stores?
Requires a dashboard or visualisation. Decision and plan for this needs to be
added early and good technical supprting solution required (e.g visualisation,
cloud based servers).
Need to include longitudinal aspect to indicators with changing data
availability across time and multiple data custodians including communities.
Who wll be the gatekeeper? Who's in and who's out in terms of data. One
criteria is open access and a mechanism to maintain consistency of data the
second criteria? need accessibility and perserverance.
Need to be aware of limited resources and the lack of funding provided. Risk
of delivering too much with too little.
Possibility of scanning Smart Cities initiatives. Also cities pushing open data
availability would be better criteria.
Suggestion of approximately 10 cities pushing the open data agenda (eg
Sydney, Melbourne, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Toronto, Chicago).
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Possibility of losing people because of lack of content interest but the
difficulty of scope creep. Discussion about Walkability indexes and the need
for heterogeneity of data. Big problems with walkability indices and the end
user perspectives.
Separation of working group and interest group and keep record over the
next few months and consider meeting in Amsterdam.
Dublinked and Dublin Dashboard - Prof Rob Kitchin. Funding possibilities via
S1 or Horizon2020 or Joint Program Initiative Urban (JPI Urban)?
Perhaps criteria for city selection could be based on familiarity with
indicators.
Actions
2. Determine if the s project constitutes an interest group or a working group?
DUDES or not?
3. Identify user groups and their needs (will determine other actions)
4. Nominate the gate keeper
5. Identify case study indicators and cities
6. Identify a researcher located in each city that is used to test the prototype.
7. Address issues with including/using walkability
8. Clarify role of RDA
Outcomes
1. Demonstrate value of infrastructure for internationally comparable social
indicators
2. Basis for including other cities in future.
RDA Working Group – Urban Quality of Life Indicators Initiative
Scope
International
Charter
A concise articulation of what issues the WG will address within a 12-18
month time frame and what its “deliverables” or outcomes will be –
deliverables and outcomes to be confirmed
Aim
Identify a minimum set of interoperable open access datasets in the economic,
social, and environmental domain that can be used to build comparable
indicators of quality of life (QoL) indicators in a global setting
Actions
 Identify a minimum set of QoL indicators that can be built on existing
open access interoperable datasets
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Remove barriers to interoperability (e.g. through agreed definitions,
and semantics)
Identify the strengths, weaknesses, and methodological challenges in
utilizing data provided by the public through social networks or mobile
apps to measure subjective wellbeing.
Test the approach across a select number of cities in European,
Australia and North America.
Value Proposition:
City planners, and policy and decision makers will benefit from the being able
to benchmark and check the health of their city based on both objective and
subjective data. Through an open data infrastructure citizens and communities
will also be able to access indicator information to see how their local area of
interest measures against these indicators.
Access to such indicators could inform the types of project and priorities of
projects that Councils invest in to improve the livability of their city. Such
information could also be used for community groups to decide what grass
routes activities they might undertake to improve their communities and
neighbourhoods.
Engagement with existing work in the area:
In the context of Australia, AURIN is supporting the formulation and
distribution of national benchmarked small area indicators products including:
 OECD Comparable and other selected small areas indicators
 Small area wellbeing and quality of life
 Small area indicators of disadvantage for the indigenous population
 Australian national datasets for social and health indicators
 An analytical platform for the integration of VicHealth Survey and
Spatial Objective Contextual Data.
In the context of the EU, INSPIRE is the legal framework establishing an
infrastructure across the 28 member states to share environmentaland spatial
information and services. Building on this platform (http://inspiregeoportal.ec.europa.eu/) two new institutional projects at the European
Commission Joint Research Centre complement the official data from public
administrations with dynamic data from sensor networks and the public. A
project on Urban Sustainability and Quality of Life explores the added value of
combining these heterogeneous data sources and develop new indicators of
wellbeing and quality of life in urban areas.
Other groups to be engaged in the project include:
TBC
RDA Geospatial IG (in process of being established)
Actions:
1. Select case study cities.
2. Select sub-set of indictors.
3. Collect data for indicators including authoritative/administrative and crowd
sourced.
4. Implement data fusion technique for combining data sources to create
indicators.
5. Develop online indicator store including visualization interface.
6. Workshops with policy and decision-makers and community groups.
Outcomes
1. Months 1-3 shortlist list of participating cities.
2. Months 3-6 Develop framework for collecting data (subjective, objective)
3. Month 6-12 Implement online indicator store with visualization.
4. Month 12-18 run workshops with end users (policy-decision makers and
community groups)
5. Interim meeting RDA in Amsterdam in September 2015 by Project team to
review progress.
6. Code will be developed as open source and made available on GitHub
7. Community will be broadened through communications via social media,
and AURIN, INSPIRE and RDA newsletters.
Initial Membership: A specific list of initial members of the WG and a description
of initial leadership of the WG.
TBC
Walter Stewart
Greg Foliente
Chris Pettit
Suchith Anand
Melanie Davern
Elizabeth Griffin
Malcolm Wolski
Stefanie Kethers
Chris Hill
Max Craglia
Peter Olwell
Alan Smeaton
Glenn Geers
VonuThakuriah
Puneeth Kishore
Lisel O’Dwyer