Smart City Challenge #1

Characterising City ‘Wellness’ 

Leads: Kirk Harland (University of Leeds – Talisman project) & Dianna Smith (Queen Mary, University of London)

Background

Several websites provide useful information by geographical areas to assist people in making decisions about where to live. Examples include:

• http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk
• http://www.police.uk
• http://www.uklocalarea.com/index.php
• http://www.propertynotepad.co.uk
• http://www.walkscore.com
• http://www.checkmyarea.com
• http://www.checkmyfile.com
• http://www.fixmystreet.com
• http://www.mouseprice.com

The London Atlas (http://data.london.gov.uk/visualisations/atlas/lsoa-atlas/atlas.html) provides a wealth of information for the capital that can be mapped, graphed and ranked providing insights into local area characteristics. However, what we are currently missing is a tailored way to map city ‘wellness’ based on things that are important to us. That’s where this challenge comes in!

Aim of the Challenge

The aim of this challenge is to create a geographical ‘wellness’ indicator for London similar in structure to the Index of Multiple Deprivation but with a dynamic weighting scheme. This will enable you (as a user) to prioritise the underlying indicators that are most important to you.  These underlying indicators  may include information on crimes, access to health care, education provision, demographic attributes, access to food stores and provision of ambulance services.  The resulting weighted indicator and underlying components will be visualised through both interactive maps and graphs.

Resources

Links to data sources will be provided but here are some to get the challenge started:

1. London Ambulance Service call outs: http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/monthly-ambulance-service-incidents-lsoa
2. Crime: http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/recorded-crime-summary-data-london-lsoa-level
3. Housing cost (average by LSOA): http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/average-house-prices-borough
4. Food costs:  Basket of good at http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/
5. The London Atlas: http://data.london.gov.uk/visualisations/atlas/lsoa-atlas/atlas.html
6. The UK Department for Communities and Local Government’s official Linked Open Data site: http://opendatacommunities.org/

Skills/Interests Needed for the Challenge

We are looking for a wide variety of skills and interests to help us work together successfully on this challenge.  We would like individuals with an interest and experience in one or more of the following:

• Geographical data manipulation
• Statistics
• Methods of interactive visualisation / communication
• Web designers OR knowledge of Javascript
• Online mappers
• Anyone with a love of data!