I am writing to outline some of the ways in which the Urban Big Data Centre's Data Service can hopefully support your research and engagement activities.

As you may know UBDC(http://ubdc.ac.uk) has both the remit and resources to acquire data from external organisations to support urban research. Some of the resources that we have successfully acquired include data related to active travel (Strava Metro), house sales and rentals (Zoopla) and educational attainment in the UK (HESA and UCAS). If you have any specific data needs or more general research questions that may benefit from the acquisition of commercial or public sector data then please get in touch with me to discuss the opportunities. Alternatively, there may be data sets that you have used, developed or been made aware of that you feel could benefit a wider research community. If so, I'd love to hear about them to explore how they might find a wider audience within our Data Service. Generally, subject to the specific terms associated with any individual dataset, we can share data to anyone, UK or otherwise. More resource-intensive services, such as use of our data sourcing service, controlled data service or more involved research support are typically limited to UK researchers and communities.

Looking beyond data acquisitions, I also wanted to draw your attention to opportunities associated with our SASNet Programme (see http://ubdc.ac.uk/outreach-plus-training/sasnet/). Aimed at building data analytics capacity amongst social science researchers, the Programme has resources available to run training events and to support fellowships, enabling academic and non-academic visitors to engage with UBDC's community for research and technology exchanges. Again, if you have ideas on people that might be suited to a fellowship or have identified capacity shortfalls that you'd like to be addressed it would be great to hear from you. You can write to me or directly or to our dedicated SASNet enquiries address, [email protected].

More generally, if there are any aspects of the UBDC Data Service that you would like to know more about or to contribute to please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Warm wishes for the festive holiday season,

Andrew McHugh