Page 17 - Doing Data Together by The Scotsman

PRACTICAL HELP POST-COVID-19
Projects exploring the practical ways data can help rebuild the tourism and festivals sector, funded by the Data Driven Innovation initiative, are:
I COVIDCollect is an online “click-and-collect platform” which aims to reduce the impact of Covid-19 on small businesses in the Edinburgh and Lothian food industry. It has developed a B2B platform for local food producers and restaurants, allowing the latter to source produce more easily, manage stock more effectively and track trends.
I Art In/After Lockdown: Recovering Edinburgh’s Cultural Spaces is a project that is working with LeithLate to create a virtual tour to build on the success of the Leith-based charity’s walking tour of the area’s murals and shutter art. The joint initiative hopes to link existing data to Edinburgh city bus routes to create specially curated tours, encouraging residents and tourists to explore cultural assets beyond the city centre.
I Lessons from the past crises for the Scottish hospitality sector and implications for Covid-19 is a project developing data-driven models to forecast scenarios
for the recovery of Scotland’s hospitality industry. The project, working in conjunction with Wiserfunding, a London fintech company, is using 20 years
of financial statements from global tourism and hospitality businesses in its research.
I SIM-SPREAD: Data Driven Simulation and Modelling for Infection Spread Reduction
and Cultural and Economic Reopening in Edinburgh is is
a simulation framework using mobility data to deduce the likely rate of spread of a disease. It is studying the effect of different restrictions on the Capital, including limits on mobility and venue closures.
I Post-Covid-19 Edinburgh Tourism Recovery – see interview with team member Welina Lacka on Page 10.
ions of the crowds
challenges and identify new oppor- tunities to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is vital and has been part of the thinking of the Fringe Society for a number of years now.
“The Fringe Society is part of the University of Edinburgh’s Creative Informatics programme and we’ve been working with data scientists to help develop new ways to aid audi- ence discovery.
“The joy of the Fringe is the enor- mous range of work to see, and we know our audiences are keen to try something new. But with so many shows each year, audiences are look- ing for guidance and support to dis- cover something new and expand their experience.
“Our project is exploring how per- formance work can be thought of dif- ferently – rather than, ‘Do I want a theatre or a dance show?’, we’d like audiences to be able to navigate by mood, and finding new ways to use the data we hold about shows and content will allow us to develop a new way of thinking about how this can be searched and navigated by audiences keen to find something undiscovered.”
The Fringe is also working with the National Library of Scotland to digi- tise the Fringe’s programme archive, which it hopes will become an open data source for anyone who is inter- ested to undertake research, allow- ing new ideas and tools to emerge.
how the Fringe understands and responds to the outcomes of the pandemic, “from the basics of under- standing where our audiences come from, to the UK-wide surveys about how people will feel about return- ing to live performances and their expectations”.
The Fringe spokesperson adds: “Looking at this data for our own audiences and being able to compare it with the national trends will help us understand the nuance of our own audiences and plan better for what is an unknown future for us all.”
Shaping the future is what data sci- entists do best, and a team of Univer- sity of Edinburgh students recently took part in a pan-European “hack- athon” to explore solutions to chal- lenges related to Covid-19.
The team, working with the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe, designed an immer- sive experience, EdinGo, which connected international audi- ences and performers within virtual venues.
It is clear the future is here ... I believe we are experiencing the birthofthenew artist–the
data scientist
Now and then: the Royal Mile looks very different this year compared to its usual festival self. Below, Briana Pegado of Creative Scotland. Main pictures: Lisa Ferguson; Andrew Milligan/PA
Using Google Street View and Twitch performer rooms, the team designed a digital festivals expe- rience, which Briana Pegado of Creative Scotland describes as “the future”.
She says: “It is clear the future is here ... I believe we are experiencing the birth of the new artist – the data scientist.
“If we look at data for what it is, information, artists and creative people have always distilled infor- mation into their creative practice or expression.
“It is just now in our modern day that we can analyse, manipulate, collate, and collect data sets using machine learning, artificial intelli- gence, and other technologies on a scale we have not been able to before.
“With these new processes and ways of working, new disciplines have emerged across the creative sector, from AI bots creating ephemeral pieces of visual art
to craft makers using bird migra- tion data to create new patterns for their textile creations.
“The future of the creative indus- tries and the future of data are interdependent. Initiatives like EdinGo are just one of many examples of how data and tech can be applied to enhance our physi- cal spaces and our understanding of our physical world.”
And data will be a key factor in
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