Smarter tourism: solving the data problem to boost tourism and create better cities

Posted on April 3, 2017 by stevenmcginty

Royal Exchange Square, with sparkling skylights at night

Image by Tony Webster via Creative Commons

By Steven McGinty

On 22 March, I attended ‘Smarter Tourism: Shaping Glasgow’s Data Plan’, an event held as part of DataFest 2017, a week-long festival of data innovation with events hosted across Scotland.

Daniel MacIntyre, from Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (the city’s official marketing organisation), opened the event by highlighting Glasgow’s ambitious target of increasing visitor numbers from two million to three million by 2023.

To achieve this goal, Mr MacIntyre explained that the city would be looking to develop a city data plan, which would outline how the city should use data to solve its challenges and to provide a better experience for tourists.

In many ways, Glasgow’s tourism goal set the context for the presentations that followed, providing the attendees – who included professionals from the technology and tourism sectors, as well as academia and local government – with an understanding of the city’s data needs and how it could be used.

Identifying the problem

From very early on, there was a consensus in the room that tourism bodies have to identify their problems before seeking out data.

A key challenge for Glasgow, Mr MacIntyre explained, was a lack of real time data. Much of the data available to the city’s marketing bureau was historic (sometimes three years old), and gathered through passenger or visitor experience surveys. It was clear that Mr MacIntrye felt that this approach was rather limiting in the 21^st century, highlighting that businesses, including restaurants, attractions, and transport providers were all collecting data, and if marketing authorities could work in collaboration and share this data, it could bring a number of benefits.

In essence, Mr MacIntyre saw Glasgow using data in two ways. Firstly, to provide a range of insights, which could support decision making in destination monitoring, development, and marketing. For instance, having data on refuse collection could help ensure timely collections and cleaner streets. A greater understanding of restaurant, bar, and event attendances could help develop Glasgow’s £5.4 million a year night time economy by producing more informed licensing policies. And the effectiveness of the city’s marketing could be improved by capturing insights from social media data, creating more targeted campaigns.

Secondly, data could be used to monitor or evaluate events. For example, the impact of sporting events such as Champions League matches – which increase visitor numbers to Glasgow and provide an economic boost to the city – could be far better understood.

Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC)

One potential solution to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s need for data may be organisations such as the Urban Big Data Centre.

Keith Dingwall, Senior Business Manager for the UBDC, explained that the centre supports researchers, policymakers, businesses, third sector organisations, and citizens by providing access to a wide variety of urban data. Example datasets include: housing; health and social care data; transport data; geospatial data; and physical data.

The UBCD is also involved in a number of projects, including the integrated Multimedia City Data (iMCD) project. One interesting aspect of this work involved the extraction of Glasgow-related data streams from multiple online sources, particularly Twitter. The data covers a one year period (1 Dec 2015 – 30 Nov 2015) and could provide insights into the behaviour of citizens or their reaction to particular events; all of which, could be potentially useful for tourism bodies.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics, i.e. the combination of data and statistical techniques to make predictions about future events, was a major theme of the day.

Faical Allou, Business Development Manager at Skyscanner, and Dr John Wilson, Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, presented their Predictive Analytics for Tourism project, which attempted to predict future hotel occupancy rates for Glasgow using travel data from Glasgow and Edinburgh airport.

Glasgow City Marketing Bureau also collaborated on the project – which is not too surprising as there a number of useful applications for travel data, including helping businesses respond better to changing events, understanding the travel patterns of visitors to Glasgow, and recommending personalised products and services that enhance the traveller’s experience (increasing visitor spending in the city).

However, Dr Wilson advised caution, explaining that although patterns could be identified from the data (including spikes in occupancy rates), there were limitations due to the low number of datasets available. In addition, one delegate, highlighted a ‘data gap’, suggesting that the data didn’t cover travellers who flew into Glasgow or Edinburgh but then made onward journeys to other cities.

Uber

Technology-enabled transport company, Uber, has been very successful at using data to provide a more customer oriented service. Although much of Uber’s growth has come from its core app – which allows users to hire a taxi service – they are also introducing innovative new services and integrating their app into platforms such as Google Maps, making it easier for customers to request taxi services.

And in some locations, whilst Uber users are travelling, they will receive local maps, as well as information on nearby eateries through their UberEATS app.

Uber Movement, an initiative which provides access to the anonymised data of over two billion urban trips, has the potential to improve urban planning in cities. It includes data which helps tourism officials, city planners, policymakers and citizens understand the impact of rush hours, events, and road closures in their city.

Chris Yiu, General Manager at Uber, highlighted that people lose weeks of their lives waiting in traffic jams. He suggested that the future of urban travel will involve a combination of good public transport services and car sharing services, such as uberPOOL (an app which allows the user to find local people who are going in their direction), providing the first and last mile of journeys.

Final thoughts

The event was a great opportunity to find out about the data challenges for tourism bodies, as well as initiatives that could potentially provide solutions.

Although a number of interesting issues were raised throughout the day, two key points kept coming to the forefront. These were:

The need to clarify problems and outcomes – Many felt it was important that cities identified the challenges they were looking to address. This could be looked at in many ways, from addressing the need for more real-time data, to a more outcome-based approach, such as the need to achieve a 20% reduction in traffic congestion.
Industry collaboration – Much of a city’s valuable data is held by private sector organisations. It’s therefore important that cities (and their tourism bodies) encourage collaboration for the mutual benefit of all partners involved. Achieving a proposition that provides value to industry will be key to achieving smarter tourism for cities.

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7 digital platforms that are reshaping how planners engage the community

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Rebecca Jackson

By Rebeccca Jackson

We often think of planning as being about physical construction and the regulations and processes around this. But buildings are not constructed in isolation. The planning profession has to consider community views, and there is a need for different organisations and stakeholders to work together to enable development and regeneration. The co-design and co-creation of project briefs and delivery strategies between planners, architects and the community is critical to creating successful planning projects. However, engaging the public in the complicated planning process is difficult.

Integrating the variety of views and opinions within a community is vital to ensuring that places are designed in a way that best suits the needs of current and future residents and businesses. But the traditional methods of engagement can seem inadequate, especially in terms of reaching younger people, or those who have little understanding of how the planning system works.

Often people feel they are not able to engage, while others almost “over engage” and become the “usual suspects” during consultations, neither of which is especially helpful when the goal is to create outcomes which benefit whole communities.

Our guest blog earlier this year from Dr Paul Cowie at the University of Newcastle, looked at an award-winning theatre project which is engaging communities with planning processes. Following on from Paul’s blog post, we highlight here some examples of digital platforms which are expanding public engagement in planning.

The resources below offer some insights into this approach – some of these featured in a recent presentation given by Donagh Horgan at a conference held at the University of Strathclyde.

1. IDEO

IDEO is an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centred, design-based approach to helping organisations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow. Project work includes designing citizen-focused online resources for clients who wish to engage more with service users. In addition, the Open IDEO element of the business aims to encourage people to work collaboratively to solve social issues, emphasising each individual’s value through their own experiences and knowledge, and seeking to use that to design innovative plans to create solutions to problems.

2. CitizenLab

CitizenLab is a civic engagement platform on which citizens are invited to co-create their city. Software helps city administrators to tap into the collective intelligence of their citizens. The software allows people to participate in polls and enables administrators and planners to view collective data about the public’s views.

3. Organicity

An online platform to promote the co-creation of smart cities of the future. The project is a new EU initiative that puts people at the centre of the development of future cities. The project brings together three leading smart cities and a total of 15 consortium members with great diversity in skills and experience. The idea is to share experiences in order to use citizen experience and practitioner expertise to co-create future smart cities. It is run in partnership with a number of other organisations, including Catapult.

4. Loomio

There are also more free flowing, informal ways of engaging which can still be effective ways for communities to engage with one another, with planners and with service providers on a common platform. Tools such as Yammer and Slack, as well as government-designed online forums, can provide spaces for people to put ideas forward and allow for free flowing comment and discussion.

Similarly, Loomio is an open source software tool, built by a worker-owned cooperative social enterprise based in New Zealand, which seeks to increase collaborative design making within towns and cities. It is centred on co-operative and co-creative values, and looks to break down barriers to participation at all levels and across a range of organisations and works on a more open free flowing basis, encouraging groups to come together to openly discuss issues. It has the potential if used well to be a useful space to generate free flowing dialogue and discussion on community development plans and models.

5. Open Poplar

Open Poplar is a website based around the Poplar area of London, which seeks to make the most of the space in the area, for the benefit of the people and communities within Poplar. The website lists free spaces which people are then able to apply to take up using a form, the submissions are then taken forward and successful applicants are invited to occupy the space. There are no strict requirements for the sort of organisation that can occupy the space and applications range from start-up cafes, to community orchestras, but the site requires that applicants have a clear idea of what they want to do in the space and be able to fund it themselves.

6. Hands on Bristol

A collaboration between the Bristol School of Architecture, University of the West of England and the Bristol community, that seeks to encourage and strengthen knowledge exchange between education programmes and local communities through collaboration in live projects. The interaction between planners/ service providers and the community is documented online, and people can use various online channels to follow their progress but the community work itself takes place online too, with the online platform being a tool of engagement.

7. Community PlanIt

This online platform allows people to participate in planning at a community level through gamification. The idea is to allow participants to engage in a new and creative way, and to attempt to attract participants, and therefore views, which may not have been heard before.

Participants register on the platform and take part in “missions” which asks their views on scenarios relating to new plans which are being submitted; participants win coins for participating in “missions”, which they are then asked to “pledge” to causes. Those which receive the most support are then given real money to spend on bringing the projects to life. The idea has been used in community planning projects in a number of American cities including Philadelphia, Detroit, and Salem (MA) and figures suggest that in some areas up to 70% of players had never formally engaged in a community planning process before.

BIM: the digitisation of the built environment

Posted on May 23, 2016 by staceydingwall

by Stacey Dingwall

Last month, the Department of Architecture at the University of Strathclyde hosted a seminar on the digitisation of the built environment and how digital is disrupting the construction sector. The event focused on the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM), and its use in Scotland in particular.

What is BIM?

As defined in the UK government’s industrial strategy, BIM is “a collaborative way of working, underpinned by the digital technologies which unlock more efficient methods of designing, creating and maintaining our assets”. Specifically, it embeds key product and asset data, and a 3D computer model that manages information throughout a project’s lifecycle. BIM has been described as a “game changer” for the construction industry, and can be used in the construction of new buildings as well as retrofitting and refurbishment.

Speaker: David Philp, AECOM

The first presentation came from David Philp, Global BIM/MIC Consulting Director of AECOM and the Chair of the Scottish Futures Trust’s BIM Delivery Group. The Group was established on the recommendation of the Scottish Government’s 2013 Review of Scottish Public Sector Procurement in Construction, and tasked with delivering a BIM implementation plan for the country, which was published in September 2015.

David focused on the pathway set out in the implementation plan for Scottish public sector projects worth over £4.32m to adopt Level 2 BIM by 2017, as recommended by the 2013 review. In England, the industry was required to have adopted Level 2 by April of this year; a recent survey carried out by Construction News found that almost 70% of main contractors, consultants, professional services and clients had either fully embedded the Level 2 standards into their systems, or were using Level 2 when it suited the project.

The suitability of different levels was something that David stated was important to consider on a case by case basis – while the goal is to be Level 2 capable, sometimes Level 1 may be more appropriate. This is different to the approach taken in England, where the government has mandated that only Level 2 should be used from now on. As highlighted by David, the Chancellor’s latest Budget also included a commitment to “develop the next digital standard for the construction sector – Building Information Modelling 3 – to save owners of built assets billions of pounds a year in unnecessary costs, and maintain the UK’s global leadership in digital construction”.

David also described the benefits of using BIM, particularly Level 2, in construction projects, in terms of efficiency, reducing risk and the creation of more sustainable and intelligent infrastructure. He also touched on the use of BIM in the construction of the High Speed rail link between London and Birmingham (HS2), due to begin in 2017. BIM has been described as the “backbone” of the HS2 project, which will be the largest BIM project undertaken in Europe so far.

Speaker: Professor Bimal Kumar, Glasgow Caledonian University

The seminar concluded with a presentation by Professor Kumar, Head of BIM at GCU’s School of Engineering and Built Environment. Professor Kumar, who works with David Philp as part of the BIM 4 Academia Working Group spoke about his department’s work in embedding BIM into the taught curriculum of the courses they offer, as well as his work in developing a BIM strategy for NHS Scotland, which involved mapping their existing processes to BIM processes.

Professor Kumar also shared some of his personal opinions on the adoption of BIM in Scotland, stating his belief that it will take another 30 years before Level 3 is fully adopted. He emphasised the need to ‘demistify’ BIM, as too many organisations still think that it will cost them too much in terms of effort and money to comply with the standards.

Overall, the seminar offered a good opportunity to find out more about something that, while mystifying to most, is set to transform the global construction industry.

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The Knowledge Exchange Blog

The official blog of The Knowledge Exchange from Idox

Tag Archives: University of Strathclyde

7 digital platforms that are reshaping how planners engage the community

BIM: the digitisation of the built environment

The Knowledge Exchange Blog

The official blog of The Knowledge Exchange from Idox

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