Online data exchange programme to be developed in £1.2m project

RESEARCHERS in the Midlands will establish a live environment to test how firms and individuals could trade and control their data online after the project was backed by £1.2m funding.

The HAT Living Labs – with HAT an acronym of Hub-of-all-Things – will create a platform that can give individuals the technological power to claim, own, control and share their data the way they want to, to make better and more informed decisions.

The project builds on earlier research work and will see the University of Warwick, together with partner universities Cambridge, Surrey and UWE, create the HAT Living Labs (HALL).

It will have real users who have volunteered to participate in an experimental environment where individuals and firms would exchange data and co-create innovations as well as test out business and economic models of data exchanges.

WMG Prof Irene Ng, who leads the project, said: “Innovation in business models is a challenge as its proof has to be in a live environment with real users and real transactions and cannot be tested within a traditional lab or a research space setting in the same way a person cannot learn swimming in a library.

“A Living Lab approach ensures that experiments can occur within a live environment, but also that research is applied under controlled conditions to draw insights, create new knowledge and generate the innovations.”

It will focus on data exchanges within the retail industry through the Living Lab’s partners, including Tesco and Sky.