Building Data Ecosystems to Unlock the Value of Big Data in Liverpool City Region

This is a guest post, written and provided by:

Mark Boyle, Sue Jarvis, and Alex Singleton – Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place and the Geographic Data Science Lab, University of Liverpool

Aileen Jones – Liverpool City Region Combined Authority

Civic leaders in Liverpool are alert to the possibilities presented by computing power and data driven solutions to critical economic, social, and environmental challenges. These leaders, including Liverpool City Region (LCR), Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA), and its six constituent local authorities, are also alert to the reality that a high-performing data ecosystem must be at the centre of any high performing ‘Smart City’ Region. Accordingly, civic leaders in LCR are now striving to develop such an ecosystem to enable stakeholders to more effectively leverage the latent value inherent within local datasets. The extant energy, strengths, and assets of the City Region are cause for optimism – but the practice of sharing data is still nascent, and significant obstacles will need to be navigated if further progress is to be made.

Computerised data analytics are key progenitors of growth in central LCR strategic documents (transport, skills, innovation, industrial strategy, spatial planning, regeneration, infrastructure, climate, housing, health, education), and if harnessed effectively provide the opportunity to improve both the productivity and prosperity of the City Region. Moreover, the Metro Mayor has articulated his intention to make LCRCA a data-driven organisation that utilises data to inform and improve public policies and services. Local authorities are also making significant moves to conceptualise, audit, and improve their data infrastructures, and Liverpool City Council (LCC) in particular is taking stock of the values it wishes to use to calibrate its data management practices.

The University of Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice, and Place is committed to supporting LCR’s civic leaders  in building a high-performing data ecosystem capable of rivalling international peers. Through participation in peer-to-peer networks, continuous learning, connectivity, and knowledge exchange we are acquiring valuable expertise and greater understanding of good practices and the activities of ‘Lighthouse cities’. The University  and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority cherish their role in the MetroLab Network and have benefited greatly from ongoing learning from this network.

Ben Levine, MetroLab Network’s Executive Director, notes,

“MetroLab is an international network of cities and universities that are partnered locally to leverage data- and tech-oriented research to address pressing community priorities. We are lucky to be working with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the University of Liverpool as they collaborate on transformative projects locally. We are also pleased that lessons from their efforts can inform work happening in cities and universities across our membership in the US, UK, and Canada. The coalition of cities and universities involved in MetroLab reflects a perspective that our societal challenges — whether we are talking about sustainability, equity, or transportation — can be addressed by bringing people together from across disciplines and sectors to implement effective solutions.”

In March 2020, the Institute, in collaboration with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, will host an international symposium entitled Building Smart Cities with Citizens and for the Public Good. Metrolab will be represented by Anne Dodge, Executive Director at the University of Chicago Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and a lead on the 2020 Annual Metrolab Summit.

To inform this symposium, international experts Alanus von Radecki, Nikolay Tcholtchev, Philipp Lämmel, and Gretel Schaj, based at BABLE UG and Fraunhofer FOKUS in Germany, have undertaken a review of international good practices – mainly drawn from European cities – in the development of urban data ecosystems, and in a Heseltine Institute-sponsored Good Practices Reference Guide have profiled paradigmatic exemplars. To complement this Guide, the Institute has also published a parallel Position Statement to highlight the lessons extracted from the international good practices studied which might inform Civic leaders  in LCR.

Through our activities we hope to:

• Clarify what we mean by the term ‘Smart City’ in LCR and define associated key terms
• Articulate what we consider to be the fundamental challenges facing LCR
• Raise awareness of international good practices and support civic leaders to engage effectively with Metrolab Network
• Provide a concise health check of the status of computerised urban data analytics and data-driven solutions in LCR
• Suggest a roadmap for redevising data sharing arrangements in LCR
• Pose ‘consultation questions’ to clarify next steps.