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Data for Place

This theme looks at what data is available for a place and what methods can address LPIP questions and challenges, especially where there are gaps in the data, or the data is inconsistent throughout years and /or data is not available at a low-level geography.

Data is fundamental to all LPIP themes because it provides the information necessary for analysis, decision-making, and policy formulation. It enables a deeper understanding of economic and social processes, supports efficient labour market functioning, and helps manage and predict economic outcomes from place-based interventions.

Strands of work within this theme include:

1 – Cataloguing data and data sources which are available for place.

This involves creating a data glossary to list all data sources available for a place across LPIP themes. The data glossary contains descriptions of data sources, their key variables, frequency of updates, geography levels that this data is available for and links to data sources.

2 – Exploring good practice of using data to understand place-based challenges.

There is no single acceptable best practice approach to use data for the understanding of place-based challenges. This strand of work focuses on learning good practices for using data and how we can adopt the best practices to understand place-based challenges. This work also aims to identify issues which may hinder effective usage of data.

3 – Analysing relationships between LPIP themes, the complexity of these relationships and how place-based intervention within one theme may influence other themes in the same area.

This strand of work approaches economic problems from both a system thinking and a feedback perspective where the economy is seen as a complex system.

As a complex system, the economy is a network of dynamically interacting, heterogeneous agents, whose behaviours, strategies and relationships evolve over time. The interactions between constituent parts of economy such as industries, markets, businesses, labour force (people), government institutions and households, create layers of complexity and is a considerable challenge for modelling.

In terms of LPIP themes, it translates that each theme includes its acting agents, and the dynamic of change inevitably influences all other elements of the system.

This work will use a system dynamics approach to understand the behaviour of complex systems over time using stocks, flows, feedback loops, functions and time delays.

4 – Enumerating quantitative methods which may address place-based challenges across all LPIP themes.

The first step of this work includes learning the analytical needs of each place, what this place aims to achieve, and what are its challenges, weaknesses and strengths in regard to a particular LPIP theme.

Secondly, we will list methods which can deliver the desired analytical outputs and overcome the place-based and data-related challenges. The data-related challenges may include the availability of data and its continuity over time, when data is slow to be updated or is discontinued, inconsistency of data across years, dealing with missing data entries, using alternatives of data which are not available, creating new custom metrics etc.

The team

Dr Maryna Ramcharan (City-REDI) – LPIP Data for Place theme lead

Reports

Data and Transparency for Combined Authorities: Briefing Paper

April 2025, Professor Rebecca Riley

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Further themes

More in this theme

Further themes

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Local Policy Innovation Partnership Hub

The Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Hub seeks to address nationwide issues through local partnership and place.

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