Future Cities

Unequal educational outcomes are a key policy concern, reflecting vital national questions about the competitiveness of the UK and Scottish economies, and about social mobility and social justice. Glasgow’s secondary schools continue to perform below the national average in terms of academic qualifications. Where this prevails, many young people get off to an uneven start to adult life and encounter many avoidable economic and social obstacles as a result. This research will seek to answer the question of how educational disadvantage is influenced by residential segregation and will explore ‘neighbourhood effects’ on the quality of the educational experience across a spectrum of urban areas, with its implications for planning and policy. Located in the Urban Big Data Centre, it will provide a powerful means to explore these drivers, by offering access to linked data on the learning trajectories of individual young people, their post-school destinations, the households and neighborhoods they live in, and the educational institutions they attend.

Find out more

• Urban Big Data Centre

Much of the developed world is struggling to meet the stringent international carbon reduction targets set for 2020. Considerable investment in taking place in renewable technology, smart grid, smart metering and more efficient appliances and services. However, much of the targeted reduction could be achieved if citizens and communities were simply educated to use less energy. The University’s Department of Sociology is working with the Glasgow Future City Demonstrator on a series of media packages (traditional and social media), that will alert participants to the implications of their individual and collective energy usage and attempt to change their behaviour with the aim of reducing energy consumption. The aggregate benefit from this will be reduced consumption of home energy, more efficient use of motorised transport and a more considered use of everyday resources (i.e., water electricity, gas, petrol, food, etc.).

As with the disruption project (http://www.disruptionproject.net), this citizen engagement attempts to disrupt habitual patterns of energy consumption through a large scale education process. As more energy can be saved through reduced demand, there will be less need for significant investment in renewable technology (wind and nuclear), as well as a greater overall reduction in carbon emissions.

Find out more

• Dr Catherine Happer

Demographic trends coupled with increasing life expectancy indicate that more and more of us will live longer, becoming increasingly dependent on the people and public services around us. However, the pressure that this will place on health and social care services means that increasingly scarce public resources will become spread even thinner, with many of unable to access the levels of health and social care currently available. The model of care is shifting more and more towards independent living at home. To enable this, the housing stock in our cities will have to be re-equipped to ensure the elderly and vulnerable are safe, secure and healthy at home. The fundamental aim of the MMH project is to develop the technology to help older and/or disabled people live more independent lives.

The project has created a series of ‘multimodal’ technologies, harnessing sound, vision, smell and touch to create interactive systems which are easily understood and used by people with cognitive or sensory impairments. The team developed a range of products, including vibrating wristbands or pendants, which can be set to act as reminders for events users might otherwise forget, bowls that light up when keys or other important but easily-lost items are placed into them, and systems which can respond to speech commands, even when the speaker may have some speech impairment. Coupled with developments in tele-medicine, healthcare and (possibly) home energy management systems, the project makes a significant contribution to sustaining independent living at home through the introduction of new technology.

Future applications of this technology could lead to the development of a fully-wired house able to track a person through their day, tele-conferencing with carers and medics, providing reminders for medication or meals, ensuring they remember their appointments, or preventing them from missing phone calls or calls at their front door.

Find out more

• Professor Stephen Brewster
• New technologies enabling independence

Successful, attractive cities of the future will be those that harness the talents of the many. Cities which struggle to include individuals and communities through weaknesses in the health and education systems will be those that struggle to compete. Just as technology has a leading role in the development of a Future City strategy, everyday services in health and education must function well. The Football Fans in Training Project builds on the work of the School of Computing Science (SMART sensors), while using the attractiveness and status of Scotland’s football clubs as a means to engage physically inactive groups who might otherwise be high risk for diabetes, coronary or other lifestyle related conditions. This project is led by the University’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing as a partnership endeavour.

 Find out more

• Football Fans in Training website

The technology underpinning the traffic flow modelling in the SMART FP7 project can also be used to identify and respond to a variety of city trends identified through the synthesis of data derived from the same physical sensors, linked data and social media. Engaging with the system’s users could quantify such information as where people are congregating, what topics they’re discussing, and how busy (or quiet) parts of the city are, as well as the transportation issues the system is capable of answering. Through building a city level dialogue, the users can engage with a new type of search engine able to give them real-time answers to local questions affecting their everyday lives.

Find out more

• Smart Cities Search Engine

In partnership with several other Scottish Universities, Edinburgh Festivals, Historic Scotland and Glasgow Life, this project enables the sharing of tourist information, personal experiences, recommendations, and suggestions between personal mobile devices as the visitor moves around the city’s attractions. This creates a dialogue between individual and visitor groups to promote specific attractions, enable targeted marketing, and enhance tourist information from shared personal experience, whilst harvesting visitor data and improving business engagement with the tourist community.

Find out more

• www.smarttourism.org
• Sharing the experience

The City of Glasgow reports a long history of poor health and inactive lifestyles for many of its citizens. While numerous interventions have been attempted over the years, the effects have been variable and limited. The University’s School of Computing Science has developed a range of games and apps for use in mobile devices, designed to encourage long-term behavioural change in groups tending towards unhealthy lifestyles. One such approach utilises the sensors generally available in common handheld devices to record physical activity in under-active groups. By introducing a competitive aspect to this (game), and promoting/endorsing it through a local football club, the project has been able to reach marginal elements of the community at risk of long term health issues.

Find out more

• Dr Matthew Chalmers

This theme encompasses a wide range of research in the application of information technology to enhance living in cities. At the University’s School of Computing Science, there has been a long history of pioneering research in urban interaction, particularly with mobile devices. Research topics include:

• The development of mobile phone applications to explore new ways of navigating around the city (pedestrian and or public transport) and of helping groups of people to meet up
• Localised social media search to link physical and digital worlds
• Employing digital technology to create new cultural opportunities in museums
• Using large-scale mobile sensor deployments to track mass movements through city environments
• Deployment, analysis and ethical aspects of mass participation trials with thousands of users

 Find out more

•  Urban interaction @ glasgow
  

Cities across the world are experiencing social, economic and political stresses which are testing fundamental service structures, governance, social organisation and economic viability. Many cities in the developing world will be particularly affected by mass migration and urbanisation. Cities in the developed world will experience similar, related dynamics. Both scenarios will be heavily influenced by population movement. While migration has attracted much interest and research, there remain significant limitations to existing knowledge, not least due to the failure to join up the effects on multiple sectors (transport, education, firm location, housing, crime and the environment).

This research will draw on a big data approach to answer the question: Is immigration good for urban economies? It will attempt to inform a debate that considers immigration as both creating and reducing employment, incentives and disincentives in migration, concentrated and dispersed migrant populations and  their long-term impacts on housing and local services.

 Find out more

• Urban Big Data Centre