Projects on sharing data for energy efficiency, waste management, health and social care, legal support and museum collections have won backing from the Open Data Institute (ODI).
It has announced awards of between £15,000-20,000 for seven projects as part of its research and development programme funded by Innovate UK.
They are aimed at exploring approaches for the ethical sharing of data and to improve public services and produce environmental benefits.
Three of the seven deal with issues in the energy sector. One involves Open Climate Fix, a non-profit research lab working on making it easier for the energy system to share data – beginning with that on solar generation – with the aims of making the grid more efficient and renewable energy more attractive to investors.
Another is run by Open Data Manchester, working with hundreds of small scale energy and eco-efficiency co-operatives to help share data such as from smart meters on power usage and home energy performance assessments.
The third is led by DNV GL and involves data sharing to support decarbonisation.
The other four projects are as follows:
- Your Dsposal is aiming to collect, standardise and share data to improve transparency and accountability in the waste sector.
- ODI Leeds is leading the #OpenDataSavesLives project to stimulate innovation with data in health and social care.
- Etic Lab is using data sharing to help people without access to legal expertise, and the charities supporting them that do not have access to sensitive data that could help to resolve problems.
- Collections Trust aims to build a consensus on how all 1,700 UK museums might sustainably share data on their collections with each other and with users – from researchers to schoolchildren.
Leigh Dodds, director of delivery at the ODI, said: “These seven projects show the potential that sharing data has to solve challenges in the energy and health sectors in the UK and globally. It’s great to see people coming together to solve challenges that affect us all, like the cooperative using smart meter data to help individuals make better decisions on their climate impact.
“At the ODI, we want to help these projects succeed. Our experience of ethical data sharing and improving data infrastructure, like supporting and growing data institutions and data access initiatives, will help these projects become sustainable for the benefit of all. We look forward to working with the projects to also learn from them and help to develop tools and guidance that will support the development of other impactful initiatives.”
