Mapping for Social Innovation Project: Data mapping and results visualisation

Background
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2011) defines Social Innovation as ‘improving the welfare of individuals and community through employment, consumption or participation, its expressed purpose being therefore to provide solutions for individual and community problems’ OECD (2011). Social innovation is a participatory and bottom-up process which offers creative answers to social needs. Its impact is in its power to improve the quality of people’s lives and satisfy needs which do not find solutions from the usual institutional channels.

We are launching an ambitious Social Innovation initiative in the city of Dundee in Scotland and, at this stage, we will concentrate on an extensive mapping of needs and potentials of the local community, using both and together qualitative research and data science and visualisation.

The Project
This project will bootstrap a Social Innovation initiative, centred on the city of Dundee, particularly where there are areas of disadvantage and gap in the delivery of provisions. The investigation will focus on exploring how to build user-driven and sustainable social innovation initiatives. The project will investigate areas not provided by, or funded, via traditional public and private sources and will start a process for proposing potential solutions. Core to the this project will in particular be a strong emphasis on mapping existing activities, people’s and charities’ needs, with the intent to provide a comprehensive overview of the situation and begin exploring some areas of intervention and foresee potential Social Innovation Solutions.
The approach we propose places particular emphasis on working closely with various local groups to identify the existing gaps and the forms of social innovation that would benefit them. The actual direct outcomes will be determined through an initial mapping and exploration phase, in collaboration with the local community. We believe that the mapping phase can have an impact well beyond the scope of the project itself and it has added value for the activities of a variety of potential actors (such as trusts, philanthropists), especially around their planning and supporting activities.

The Studentship
One of the aim of the project is that the mapping of activities will be extensive and where possible complete, for the entire local community. For this reason, we propose to leverage the use of new techniques from the emerging Data Science field. Mapping will be conducted with data mining activities (e.g. on charities public facing websites, on existing Open Data available from public authorities and so on). We will then use visualisation techniques that will be easy to use and facilitate the fruition and reuse of this knowledge. The successful applicant will have at least an undergraduate degree (2:1 or higher) and a background in data science, computer science, applied mathematics, statistics or a related discipline. You will be responsible for the development of the data collection tools. You will contribute to the development of the interactive visualisation. In addition to the technical skills noted above, candidates should have strong communication, interpersonal skills and interest to work at an interdisciplinary level.