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COLOURING BRITAIN
edited by polly64. editing in progress
In Britain, the Colouring Cities national database, the Colouring London prototype and the Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRPP), involving international reproduction of open code, are all managed by the Alan Turing Institute (ATI), based at the British Library in London. The main difference in management of the national programme and the CCRP is that in Colouring Britain regional academic hubs are provided with a ready-to-go, managed platform to allow them to develop local partnerships to add and share the most accurate and comprehensive data possible at regional level. In the international programme, CCRP partners fund and manage their own national platforms. In both cases academic partners are encouraged test and improve data capture methods, interface features, content categories, and open code. Colouring Britain is being rolled out initially, as opposed to Colouring UK, as Ordnance Survey, Britain's national mapping agency, does not cover Northern Ireland. This is run separately by OS Northern Ireland. The UK is a political term referring to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Great Britain/Britain is a geographic term referring to the island that comprises England, Scotland and Wales. Political issues relating to the four countries mean to it also likely that some or all UK countries may wish in time to to set up their open building stock databases. Colouring Britain and any future Colouring UK database therefore need to be built to support such a process whilst maximising efficiency by collating and openly releasing as much data as possible.
Originally Colouring Cities initiatives in Britain were envisaged as being set up with/for/by individual cities and towns using open code developed for Colouring London. However changes in attitude by government to the release of national mapping data - since the set up of the Colouring London platform at Centre of Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London in 2016 - has led to the agreed extension of the initial unique agreement between UCL and Ordnance Survey to use its premium product, OS MasterMap product (OSMM). OSMM consists of the most comprehensive accurate building footprint data available in Britain. At the time of writing licensing issues relating to this agreement are being put in place (Feb 2022).
Discussion with OS regarding opportunities for national rollout in Britain have also been helped by CCRP international partner rollout/proposed rollout at national level i.e. Colouring Australia, Colouring Bahrain and Colouring Indonesia. Receipt of funding for, and activation of these national rollout programmes is also useful to test the impact of what happens to countries that fail to release/capture and analyse and simulate volume data in terms of being able to advance knoweldge exchange across sectors, disciplines and communities and to exploit advanced computational approaches to urban problem solving, compared to those that don't. Expanding Colouring London to national level is also relatively easy techncially as the prototype was engineered from the outset by Tom Russell to be easily scaled. Unactivated GB building polygons can currently be viewed on the Colouring London prototype by zoming out (Feb 2022).
Not yet started, planned 2022. (London prototype started 2016)
Managing body: The Alan Turing Institute (ATI); Department/Programme: Urban Analytics; Current Team: Polly Hudson (ATI), Tom Russell (University of Oxford), Ed Chalstrey (ATI), Falli Palaiologou (Loughborough University), Mateusz Konieczny, Maciej Ziarkowski.
Grant 1: Date (from/to) Amount: Add Funder: Turing Purpose: Core funding for Project lead and ATI REG software engineering
By special agreement with Ordnance Survey (Britain's national mapping agency) for use of OS MasterMap building polygons. Highest quality footprints available for Britain. Ongoing updating. Historical footprints also available in 20 year increments for many areas of Britain, as raster sheets. from c 1870. Vectorised footprints available from 1990s as OS Landline and then from 2004 as OS MasterMap.
- finalise a licence agreement with OS re use of OSMM polygons at national level
- activate OSMM polygons/building footprints at national level and scale up the Colouring London platform
- rebrand the Colouring London platform as Colouring Britain
- set up regional hubs run by public research institutions to advance the following goals:
- to maximise the amount of data inputted, in the most efficient, cost effective way
- to maximise the quality/accuracy of data input, in the most efficient, cost effective way
- to explore diverse applications for the data captured
- to bring together and support researchers/departments in Britain involved in research into the sustainable development of the national stock and/or public engagement in stock quality/sustainability
- to understand and address additional data needs of those researching into Britain's building stock
- set up a network of relevant national bodies involved in built environment/stock data management in Britain
- set up the 'Showcase/Application' section to show data applications and encourage industry to increase open data release
Colouring Britain offers the potential:
- to provide the first open national database on Britain's stock
- to provide an open tool allowing for an ongoing, visual, public audit of the stock- i.e. what do we have here? how many? how well are they working?
- to test the Colouring London prototype at national level
- to drive bulk data capture, required to explore patterns using AI
- to maximise efficiency in terms of Turing engineers' time, and to reducing costs of engineering time needed to develop and manage public building attribute databases for British cities to O.
- to provide a centralised database collaboratively maintained database, able to be added and used by multiple sectors and disciplines at national level -by academia, industry, government and the third sector- involved in creating, managing and monitoring the built environment, reduce costs of data capture and analysis for everyone, improving data availability, quality and quantity, and driving information and knowledge sharing
- to facilitate a whole-of-society, more inclusive approach towards urban sustainability provision allowing allowing all citizens access to contribute to, and draw from the platform, as and when required
- to provide a free tool that allows for citizens to come together with professionals/experts and researchers to demonstrate and celebrate both the power of our collective knowledge and the richness, potential and diversity of our built heritage
- to provide a working prototype for international partners
- to provide a source of free, high quality, volume data for use in academic research relating to the sustainability of the building stock
CBAN is an academic network being set up by ATI to generate 11 regional hubs coordinating data upload to Colouring Britain - 9 regional hubs for England and country hubs for Scotland and Wales. Regional hubs commit to coordinating local data upload from local networks, and bulk open data upload from local councils and other public/commercial bodies. Each is responsible for maintaining hubs. ATI provides a free national platform infrastructure and platform management, data upload support, exclusive use of the Colouring Cities logo- with other Colouring Cities partners- and letters if support for relevant research funding bids. ATI also provides support for applications for research funding to sustainably manage hubs and help-in-kind in terms of advisory meeting and resources. It also offers hosting for 3 meetings a year for regional network members. The programme has been specifically designed to be of relevance to academic departments already involved in collecting regional/city wide data as part of academic research programmes or linked to support for councils on Town Deals, who do not want the hassle of managing the technical side of a platform but which have knowledge, expertise and networks vital to data capture. Partnerships between regional research institutions are also strongly encouraged to maximise quality of data at local level.
The following protocols have been adapted from the international Colouring Cities Research programme to which CBAN members are asked to sign up to:
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PROTOCOL 1 Governance Protocol: CBRP Colouring Cities GB research programme partners must be publicly funded academic research institutions, regulated by UKRI see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukri-endorsement-employing-or-hosting-institutions-global-talent-visa/ukri-list-of-approved-research-organisations. Academic institutions are targeted for the following reasons: They are set up to advance knowledge; research focused; impartial; understand the need for testing over long temporal periods, and for an incremental, trial and error approach; contain expertise often across a number of relevant fields; are permanent bodies; are able to plan for the long-term; must adhere to ethical standards and accreditation protocols overseen by national higher education authorities; (for example in UK the UK Research Integrity Office publishes a Check list for researchers which we follow, http://ukrio.org/publications/checklist-for-researchers/).
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PROTOCOL 2 Sustainable management and funding Protocol: Partners commit to working towards sustainable collaborative maintenance systems in which diverse sectors and local networks all benefit from contributing additions and verifications of data.
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PROTOCOL 3 Ethical framework and ethical framework ** Protocol: CBRP partners commit to high ethical standards and to advancing open knowledge in the field of urban sustainability, and sign up to Coloring Cities' Ethical principles (see Chapter x)
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PROTOCOL 4 Openness Protocol: CBRP partners commit to releasing all data under specified open licences which include for 3rd party use, and to follow agreed open data protocols. On no account may data be charged for or released to specific audiences only. CBRP partners commit to release their data under an ODBL licence; to release platform code under a GNU licence, and to follow open data protocols. CBRP partners also commit to openness/transparency within the group regarding their activities in relation to Colouring Cities programmes, and their funding once secured. Coluring Cities is an open data research project which has been set up specifically to test tools that increase access to, and encourage sharing of free data and knowledge on building stocks. Open access with third party use is essential to ensure fairness of access, and to broaden audiences, applications and drive innovation.
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PROTOCOL 5 Building Stock Expertise Protocol: CBRP regional partners must have ongoing research focus on at least one area of the following areas - housing, planning, heritage/building history, architecture/building design and construction, building retrofit, urban metabolism, building related energy use and/or sustainable cities. The department must also be committed to multidisciplinary research and to engaging stakeholders from all the above areas, as well as citizens themselves. Expert knowledge of the stock, and its physical form, is essential within the research programme. Interest must be not be just in collecting data but also using/testing it as well within current and future research programmes.
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PROTOCOL 6 Multidisciplinary approaches: CBRP regional partners commit to advancing multidisciplinary approaches across sectors and disciplines, and across science, the humanities and the arts. Recognition of expert knowledge held by citizens and the independent voluntary sector (including in historic environment and community planning organisations where building reuse, repair, resource conservation and lifespan extension have long been advocated), as well as by experts in the construction industry, government and academia is also critical. The research programme is designed to test the value of multidisciplinary tools in sustainable stocks research, and of knowledge exchange across subjects, sectors and fields. Focus needs to be placed on the interests of mutliple sectors/group, to advance a whole-of-society approach to data capture, enrichment, release and analysis.
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PROTOCOL 7. Conduct and inclusivity Protocol: CCBRP partners commit to working in a collaborative, respectful manner and to adhering to our code of contact https://colouringlondon.org/code-of-conduct.html. All viewpoints and ideas are treated with respect. The programme is specifically designed to support academics working in urban sustainability that also wish to work on open data initiatives that promote whole-of-society knowledge exchange. It is also designed to support individual academics' where their research is also designed to benefit CBRP research programmes as a whole, and to encourage greater diversity and representation within data science. Central to all CBRP work is a recognition of the importance of thoughtful and considerate treatment of others, of their ideas and comments, of their data contributions, and their homes/buildings (about which data are collected), and an understanding that many types of expert knowledge are needed to understand and describe the composition stocks and their dynamic behaviour, and to measure their socio-economic and environmental performance.
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PROTOCOL 8 Data capture. CBRP partners commit to working to capture high quality data on the building stock, at building level, for the region as a whole
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PROTOCOL 9 Partner withdrawal from the programme Protocol. CBRP partners are entitled at any point to withdraw from the CBRP and to continue work on their regional areas outside the programme. This may for example occur where partners feel Colouring Cities protocols constrain their work. In such a situation a CBRP partner must agree to cease using the Colouring Cities name and logo provided, CBRP resources, help-in-kind for funding applications, and to the shared expertise of the CCBRP group. In the unlikely event that protocols are consciously breached (and remain unrectified) The Alan Turing Institute reserves the right to remove institutions from the programme. Colouring Cities branding is tightly controlled to maintain programme quality and to maximise trust in the CCBRP. This is essential for its long-term success and is required to ensure that data are handled by platforms, and known to be handled, to the highest standards. It also helps those using Colouring Cities platforms to understand exactly what their purpose is.
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PROTOCOL 10 Accreditation Protocol: CBRP partners commit to full accreditation of the CBRP and the Alan Turing Institute within all presentations and publications. Open code and open data licences are dealt with separately. This is a collaborative research programme and we need to ensure accurate accreditation.
Falli to edit