Green Cube

About the Client

Basildon Council serves a population of 177,000. 30 miles from central London in the centre of South Essex, the district includes the key towns of Basildon, Billericay and Wickford. More than 2,000 manufacturing, construction and service companies are based in the region, which is a priority area for development and part of Thames Gateway, one of the government’s biggest regeneration initiatives. 

This project was part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under Low Carbon Across the South East (LoCASE) programme. 

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Challenge

Sustainable Development goals are Basildon’s method of keeping promises made to their residents, and substantial measures have been put in place to achieve them. This includes using scientific and open data to pinpoint geographic problems within Basildon and bench mark against other councils in Essex and in UK. 

Under the open data initiative, the council has access to abundant sources like ONS, NHS, PHS, ONS, Essex Air, World Bank, Essex Air etc. But the council lacks the know how to harmonize the data in various heterogeneous formats and derive meaningful information out of it to deliver a better quality of life for its citizens and above all a Smart Basildon under project ‘Green Cube’. 

Transformation

As part of Green cube initiative, the project was to focused on two of the SDG goals: to provide access to affordable and Clean Energy (Goal 7) and the need to combat the Climate Action (Goal 13). 

As part of this comprehensive exercise, we have digitized the goals, indicators, and measures at both a national and at county level with specific reference to Basildon. 

In Goal 7 ‘Affordable and clean energy’ some of the key findings are, relation of energy efficient housing with number of bedrooms per house, comparison of renewable energy installations by local authorities within Basildon, Consumption of gas and electricity by Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA), Fuel poverty and Eco measures.

In Goal 13 ‘ Climate Action’ some of the key findings are in the area of, mapping Pollution levels by pollutant type at MSOA level, commuting habits, ownership of cars, electric vehicle infrastructure and impact on health and wellbeing. 

Allot’s analysis enabled the council to view data at the level of each MSOA, a statistical area encompassing areas of similar sized population along with geographical representation for efficient visual analysis and comparison. 

Technology

.The technology used was Qlik Sense and AWS cloud. The data was collected manually from various sources, cleansed and formatted using excel before uploading it to the AWS cloud. Then, the Qlik Sense Cloud visualisation tool was used to display the data in dashboards in an interactive way. 

Results

By analyzing a wide range of data sources, including: transport usage, commuting habits, healthcare information, and air pollution, we were able to reconstruct a multi-dimensional picture of Basildon By subdividing it into key urban areas that make up the borough, we were able to focus on the geographic variation of air pollution, and the social-economic impacts that this has on the population. 

One of the key outcomes of this exercise has been an improved understanding of the impact of air pollution particularly around the South Arterial road, the industrial corridor of Basildon, its impact on Asthma and academic achievements. 

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