UCL digital research facility gets go-ahead

The Government has committed to investing £4 million in a new facility at UCL to help policymakers develop ways of evening out the UK's regional economic divides. This figure is matched by an additional £5.6 million of institutional funding. The new UK Regions Digital Research Facility will bring together expertise developed independently across UCL, including next generation data analytics and novel forms of crowd-sourced 'big data', to create an open source technology platform that supports regional modelling and analysis to help answer socio-economic questions. The facility will be launched later in the year and aims to help cities across the country make better infrastructure investments and strategic decisions in a bid to rebalance the British economy. It will allow public sector policy makers, private firms and inward investors to analyse the potential options available against a background of evidence. The announcement of the new centre is timely given the debate surrounding regional imbalance following the Scottish referendum and calls to give regional cities more power over their local economies. Project lead, Professor Alan Penn, Dean of The Bartlett (UCL Built Environment), said: "The new facility will help inform debate amongst policymakers, lobbyists and communities by exploring how localities, cities and regions conspire to generate or hinder economic growth, innovation and regeneration.