HASP had the privilege of being one of the sponsors and exhibitors at this year’s GISRUK Conference, held at the University of Birmingham in April. The conference gave the team a great opportunity to engage with existing users as well as showcase HASP’s data to the wider geospatial community.
Reaching new users
Representing HASP at the conference was Agni and Conor from the Research Data Science team, as well as Jack from the Impact and Engagement team. Between them, they held conversations with a wide variety of attendees; they introduced HASP’s data products to students and researchers alike, engaged with other data providers, and met with colleagues from across the SDR UK network.
“It’s been really great to engage with students primarily here. They’re really interested in our open data products, and I’ve been putting a lot of work into developing some of those products, so it’s great to know that work’s going to pay off.”
Conor Rankine, Research Data Engineer
The conference presented an excellent opportunity to talk potential users through HASP’s array of data products. Our open data available for instant download, such as Spectus Origin-Destination Mobility Data and the Priority Places for Food Index, was popular amongst postgraduate students looking for geospatial data to support their ongoing dissertation work.
Likewise, the HASP team talked in detail with geospatial researchers about our rich, safeguarded data assets that can provide granular understandings of different themes across different spatial scales, such as Locomizer mobile phone footfall data and WhenFresh/Zoopla sales and rentals data.
It also gave the RDS team the opportunity to talk about some exciting new open products they currently have in development.
Engaging with the research community
Talking with geospatial researchers and data scientists, attending the parallel sessions, and meeting with other data providers proved a great opportunity to discuss ongoing work in the field and identify where the data gaps exist in research.
“One of the biggest takeaways is I got to see all the kinds of methods, the statistical methods, the data types people are using for all kinds of research problems, and what kind of questions are being answered.”
Agnibha Banerjee, Research Data Scientist
Events such as GISRUK enable HASP to work with the research community to discover what methods are being used and where the research and data needs are. This conference enabled us to showcase where our data can support geospatial research, as well as to inform our thinking with future data products.
“Coming to these sorts of things is just the most invaluable opportunity to directly engage with the people who are going to be using our data.”
Jack Smith, Engagement and Partnerships Officer
A big thanks to GISRUK, as well as to Dr Emma Ferranti and Dr Sarah Greenham at the University of Birmingham for hosting a fantastic event.
Read more about GISRUK here, and discover our data products via our Data Catalogue.
