Research Project
DACAS is an ESRC funded Strategic Network.
It was part of the Urban Transformations (UT) program coordinated between 2015 and 2020 by Professor Michael Keith from the University of Oxford, showcasing research on cities. The UT portfolio included over 120 research projects that engaged with the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly urban world.
Despite increasing attention on the application of new information flows to the design and development of ‘smart’ cities, there is still limited understanding of the interconnections in urban areas between ‘hard’ infrastructure and economic, ecological and social systems. Strategic Network: Data and Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems (DACAS) seeks to promote a more holistic approach through the integration of a wide range of data sources.
By bringing together an international group of researchers from a range of different fields, the project supports the development of an innovative and cross-disciplinary set of tools to gather and interpret emerging data sources. These outputs will be supported by capacity development and dissemination activities, including a number of public events and multi-stakeholder workshops.
The findings benefit policy-makers, academics and other actors seeking to develop evidence-based responses to urban issues through the use of open data sources.
