A presentation conducted by Mr Phillip Delaney, The University of Melbourne. Presented on Tuesday the 1st of October 2013. Discovering and accessing relevant data is a problem often faced by urban researchers, policy and decision-makers across Australia. Several public, private and academic entities are establishing Data Hubs; online catalogues for data discovery, access and interrogation. Data Hubs are typically web services accessible via a portal, often with narrow geographic or application focus, with varied levels of analytical and visualisation capability. The Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) is focused on providing better access to comprehensive datasets through a dedicated e-Infrastructure platform. The AURIN portal will facilitate programmatic access to data held in many emerging Data Hubs across Australia. AURIN is implementing a federated data model, providing a single access point and common interface for interrogating datasets. This paper outlines the Data Hub concept, describing the process and benefits of Data Hub integration within the AURIN e-infrastructure context

1. ENDORSING PARTNERS
Realising the Data
Hub Concept
for Urban Australia
The following are confirmed contributors to the business and policy dialogue in Sydney:
•
Rick Sawers (National Australia Bank)
•
Nick Greiner (Chairman (Infrastructure NSW)
Monday, 30th September 2013: Business & policy Dialogue
Tuesday 1 October to Thursday, 3rd October: Academic and Policy
Dialogue
Presented by: Mr Phillip Delaney, The University of Melbourne
www.isngi.org
www.isngi.org

2. Realising the Data Hub Concept
for Urban Australia
Phil Delaney & Chris Pettit

3. Outline
•
•
•
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Introduction
Data Hub Concept
Emergence of Data Hubs
Data Hubs in Australia
Case Study
Next Steps

4. Introduction
• Smart Cities – Big Data used to make
decisions/predictions about cities
• Growing need for data access in urban
research and urban planning decisions
• Data hard to find/use
• Australian Urban Research
Infrastructure Network (AURIN)
established to address these issues

5. AURIN Approach
• Facilitate merited based access to distributed
data
• Tools to find, interrogate, analyze and visualize
data and support good research methodologies
• Enable researchers to share results, interact and
collaborate
• Allow data providers to keep control of the data
and their use
• Establishing Data Hubs across Australia to enable
simple data access and distribution

6. Data Hub Concept
Data
User
Data
Owner
Data
User
Data
Owner
DATA
HUB
Data
User
Data
User
Data
Owner/
User

7. Data Hub Concept
Allows users to search for a variety of data
Allows users to access and use this data
Provides data in a discrete set of formats
Allows users/data custodians to contribute
data to the hub
• Allows for programmatic access to data; and
• Provides information about the data
(Metadata)
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•
•
•

8. Emergence of Data Hubs
• Development of data
warehouse/datamart/geoportal technology
• Geoportals created a new entry point for
online access to geographic content
• Data Hubs include these, but focus on
collaboration
– User community can help shape inputs
– Allows for shared research
– Focus on opening up data access

9. Emergence of Data Hubs
Evolution of the Data Hubs (modified from Yang et al., 2010)

10. Data Hubs – Global Context
• Applied to many fields, incl. Urban Research
– INSPIRE
– Urban Audit http://www.urbanaudit.org/
– Buildings Performance Institute Europe
http://www.bpie.eu/

11. Data Hubs – Global Context
• Applied to many fields, incl. Urban Research
– Data.gov movement – global applications based
on OKF CKAN platform http://ckan.org/
– Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) Data Hub
http://www.datahub.io/

12. Data Hubs – Australia

13. Emergence of Data Hubs
• AURIN Objective: Improve collection and
integration of urban research datasets
• AURIN Data Hubs facilitate direct data access,
through AURIN portal to key datasets
– National Government
– State Government
– Local Government
– Research Institutions
– Private Industry

14. AURIN Data Hubs

15. Establishing Data Hub
• Every data hub is different, but aligns to
consistent metadata standard
• Solution depends on existing infrastructure
– Storage
– Transmission/service standard
– Integration
• Facilitates licensing arrangements
• Establish stakeholder/user community to
ensure data meets needs

16. Data Hub Benefits
• Data Custodians retain responsibility for
maintaining/updating data
• Allows consolidated/simplified access to
complex urban datasets
• Users accessing up to date data
• Consistent metadata standards across all data
types
• Single point of licensing data for research

17. Melbourne Data Hub
• Signed off by 7 Secretaries across Victorian Government
• Unlocked over 120 dataset to urban researchers via the
AURIN portal
• Data ingested from 12 separate data custodians

18. Melbourne Data Hub
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User/stakeholder groups identified relevant urban data
Data Hub established using GeoServer at UoM
Custodians contribute data to single distribution location
AURIN only one user of many – integrated into research tools:
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Walkability
Employment
Housing
Health

20. Conclusion
• Data Hubs increase ease of data discovery and
use
• Multiple Data Hubs successfully integrated in
the AURIN platform
• AURIN Data Hubs can be used in external
urban research applications
• AURIN is implementing the Data Hubs
concept to support urban research in
Australia

21. Next Steps
• Continue discussions with data custodians to
determine future possible data hubs
• Further investigate data.gov.au sites for their
potential as data hubs
• Investigate consuming live data feeds form Data
Hubs
• Develop common framework for establishing new
Data Hub
• Examine opportunities to expand/scale-up existing
data hubs to support new users/applications beyond
the current AURIN project

22. THANK YOU
Questions?
Register to receive AURIN newsletter at www.aurin.org.au
Email me at phillipd@unimelb.edu.au