Colouring Cities
Project Spotlight
In the first of a series of Project Spotlights, Dr Mike Simpson discusses Colouring Cities, one of the biggest ongoing projects that the Newcastle RSE Team has been collaborating on over the last few years.
Colouring Cities
The Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRP), managed by The Alan Turing Institute, is a research-led, free public resource, providing open spatial data on the buildings in our cities. It is an open knowledge initiative, built collectively by, and for, academia, communities, government, industry and the third sector. The programme’s overall aim is to help improve the quality, efficiency, resilience and sustainability of buildings, and urban areas, and to accelerate the move to net zero in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The programme began with the Colouring London prototype in 2016 and now consists of over 150 contributors in more than 20 countries. The platform collects over 150 data fields across 12 main categories and nearly 50 subcategories, including Age, Land Use, Construction and Energy Performance. The platform allows data collection via moderated bulk upload, data streaming, and crowdsourcing, and it has started to integrate AI and machine learning tools. This data can then be explored and visualised at individual building level on an interactive map of the city.
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Over the last ten years, the CCPR has expanded. The programme allows international academic institutions to co-work on a global network of interoperable open data platforms on national building stocks, and accelerate the sharing of resources and expertise.
Our Contribution
Mike has been involved with Colouring Cities for a couple of years and has made numerous contributions to the programme in that time. He has overseen the transition from the Colouring London prototype to the Colouring Core platform, which is now used by dozens of different institutions across the world. He has also contributed significantly to the documentation and management of the project, including overseeing the collaboration between multiple researchers and engineers all across the globe.
More Information
You can visit Colouring Britain to see the platform in action or learn more about the CCRP on the Colouring Cities website.
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