2.4m Euro Research Investment for Maynooth University

2.4m Euro Research Investment for Maynooth University

How can we manage our cities in the 21st century?

The world’s major cities are becoming  larger and more complex, with different systems for transport, infrastructure and people that all create  challenges that if not addressed will see economic stagnation and increasingly frustrated city dwellers.   A major problem is that planners and citizens cannot cope with the data that smart cities generate. 

To solve this, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation, Mary Mitchell-O’Connor TD announced a €2.4million award to a team of scientists from Maynooth University who will work with Cork and Dublin City Councils and others to build more extensive and effective city dashboards. The award is through the Science Foundation Ireland investigators programme that supports world class research in priority areas deemed to be at the pinnacle of scientific excellence.

Professor Chris Brunsdon, the lead investigator explained: “This project tackles three sets of fundamental problems:  managing complex data; showing information in a useable way; and  analysing or modelling data to support policy. These are some of the biggest problems in data science today and are areas in which Maynooth University researchers are global leaders”.

Professor Rob Kitchin added that the team was confident of success: “We have already built a Dublin Dashboard which anyone can access (www.dublindashboard.ie).  Dubliners are using this to discover more about their services, while planners use it to improve delivery of the myriad of civic services.  This project will allow us to solve tricky and fundamental data questions, but it will influence dashboard development globally.  Cork will be the first city to see the benefit of this new work”

Martin Charlton, of Maynooth University’s National Centre for Geocomputation, noted that  “city dashboards are also important because they enable start up and small companies to create new innovative products.  Our research will support the creation of an open data economy in Ireland by opening up of real-time and public administration data, along with open source code and analytics necessary for Ireland’s economic development.”
 
The Maynooth project brings together expertise from computer science, spatial statistics, geocomputation, and multimedia with local authorities and other agencies.  It will employ up to twelve people with skills in data analytics and visualisation.  Maynooth University is the national leader for industry-academic collaboration and publication, and is placed 68th in the world in the 2016 Times Higher Education ranking of young Universities.

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