Big Data Here

The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) at UCL is organising a short pop-up exhibition on hyperlocal data: Big Data Here. The exhibition is taking place in North Lodge, the small building right beside UCL’s main entrance. The exhibition materials are supplied by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).

Inside, a big projection shows local digital information. What the screen shows will change daily between now and Friday, when the exhibition closes. Today it is showing a live to-the-second feed of bus arrivals at the bus stop outside the North Lodge, and tube train arrivals at Euston Square station just up the road. Watch the buses zip by as they flash up “Due” in big letters on the feed. Both of these are powered by Transport for London’s Unified Push API, and we are planning on publishing the visualisation online next week. Tomorrow will be showing a different local data feed, and then a final one on Friday.

Opposite the projection is the iPad Wall. This was created by CASA a few years back by mounting a bank of iPads to a solid panel (above photo shows them in test mode) and allowing remote configuration and display. The wall has been adapted to show a number of metrics across its 12 panels. Four of these showcase footfall data collected by one of our data partners, and being used currently in CDRC Ph.D. research. The other panels show a mixture of air quality/pollutant measures, tube train numbers and trends, and traffic camera videos.

We hope that passersby will enjoy the exhibition visuals and use them to connect the real world with the digital space, a transposition of a digital data view onto the physical street space outside.

The exhibition runs 24 hours a day until Friday evening, with the doors open from noon until 3:30pm each day. The rest of the time, the visualisations will be visible through the North Lodge’s four windows. The exhibition is best viewed at night, where the data shines out of the window, spilling out onto the pavement and public space beyond:

Big Data Here is taking place during Big Data Week 2016. Visit the exhibition website or just pop by UCL before Friday evening.