The Data-Driven Innovation hubs
The Data-Driven Innovation initiative has helped establish - and exists to support - five data-driven innovation ‘hubs’, which house expertise and facilities to help 10 industrial sectors become more innovative through data.
The Bayes Centre, powered by the investment in the Edinburgh International Data Facility, provides the focal point for all the other DDI programme initiatives in the city region. The Bayes Centre will assemble up to 600 world-leading applied data science researchers, talented students and staff from organisations across the public, private and third sectors into one facility. It will do this by providing commercial collaboration space – and robotics “Living Lab” testing facilities – for use by industry, and by drawing together the University of Edinburgh Schools of Informatics, Mathematics, and Design together with the Alan Turing Institute, the Data Lab and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre.
The National Robotarium will be co-located on the Heriot-Watt University campus, having access to the resources of both Heriot-Watt and the University of Edinburgh. It will meet existing and future industrial need by accelerating the generation of knowledge and flow of technologies into the economy through targeted research, industry collaboration, living laboratories, demonstrator and incubation facilities. The National Robotarium will provide state-of-the-art facilities to co‐locate researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs and educators to deliver the UK’s leading international centre for the generation of new, smart robotics companies.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI)
The EFI will be a global centre for multi-disciplinary, challenge-based DDI research, teaching and societal impact. The world is experiencing major changes including climate volatility, political discontent, economic upheaval and technological change. The EFI will bring different ways of thinking about these and other global issues, and of devising new solutions. It will provide thought-leadership in cultural, ethical, managerial, political, social and technological DDI issues, and help to transform the application, governance and benefits delivered from the use of data. It will do this by bringing together a range of academic disciplines, together with third party organisations, across financial services, cultural industries and the public sector that are dealing directly with these challenges.
Through the application of data science, the Usher Institute will aim to develop innovative and financially sustainable models of health and social care that improve lives.
Located at Edinburgh BioQuarter, the Institute will become a world-leading hub where up to 600 health and social care researchers and scientists will collaborate with colleagues from public, private and third sectors organisations to deliver data-driven advances. The Institute will drive health and social care innovation at scale by integrating the activities of: clinicians, life scientists and data scientists to identify new, co-produced insights in identified areas of challenge; and industry and public sector organisations to extract, apply and commercialise expert knowledge. The Institute will draw on Scotland’s mature and world-leading health data assets, and well-established governance and data-sharing protocols developed in partnership with the National Health Service and the Scottish Government.
An efficient agricultural sector is critical to social wellbeing; by 2050, global agricultural production will need to increase by 50% to feed a growing global population. By applying data technologies that enable farmers and related industries to improve food production, veterinary care, digital agriculture (Agritech) will be critical to increasing global food supply.
The project will seek to leverage existing world-class research institutes and commercialisation facilities to help Easter Bush become a global location of Agritech and veterinary excellence. It will do this through the deployment of a campus-wide network that will generate and collate, in real time, a multitude of local and global data, (e.g. veterinary activities, animal genetics, food species genetics, soil condition, weather and market drivers). It will also work with commercial collaboration partners to use this information to realise the potential of having the right food species, and the right products, in the right field at the right time to maximise agricultural productivity.
As part of this project, there is also a proposed A701 relief road and A702 link, which represents a significant investment in the key infrastructure needed to support the major growth planned along the A701 corridor.
EIDF (Edinburgh International Data Facility)
The EIDF project will provide the enabling data infrastructure platform for the wider DDI Programme. The DDI Programme requires a powerful, high capacity and flexible infrastructure, capable of responsive delivery of an expanding range of complex and bespoke data and analytical services. By leveraging prior investments in the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), and specifically its Advanced Computing Facility (ACF), EIDF represents a practical, flexible and cost-effective approach to the delivery of the diverse technological requirements of the DDI Programme.