Optimising the use of Partial information in Urban and regional Systems

To meet the needs for comprehensive information on socio-economic systems such as urban and regional transport planning, and in the health services sector, data from diverse sources (e.g. conventional sample surveys, census records, operational data streams and data generated by IST systems themselves) must be combined. There is currently no appropriate developed methodology that enables the combination of complex spatial, temporal and real time data in a statistically coherent fashion.

The overall aim of the proposed project is to develop, apply and evaluate such methodologies, taking as a specific case study the transport planning sector. The specific objectives of the study are:

' To develop a generic statistical framework to enable the optimal combination of complex spatial and temporal data from survey and non-survey sources.
' To apply the generic framework within the field of urban and regional transport planning.
' To develop the necessary database and estimation software to enable the application of the statistical framework in a number of case study areas.
' To undertake a major pilot application study in London, focusing on the derivation of indicators of the mobility and the perform
' In parallel, to investigate the feasibility of applying the framework and methodologies developed both in other transport planning contexts and in other proximate domains, specifically environmental management and social statistics.
' Based on the experience gained in the pilot application and the feasibility studies, to evaluate the performance of the proposed methods and to define the scope and approach for wider applications in relevant domains including environmental management and health care.
' To disseminate the results to the relevant academic and practitioner communities.