Driving improved national infrastructure through better data sharing
Catherine Dhanjal, Media Manager and Alison Oliver, Research Community Manager, DAFNI
| UKCRIC
Data is at the heart of all infrastructure research. It underpins every decision made by central government, local government, private sector and others involved in the nation’s infrastructure. And that infrastructure is the bedrock of our daily lives – from the moment we wake in the morning and turn on our taps, put the kettle on to boil, heat our homes, and on our commute to work or school onwards.
But the way that we plan for maintenance, new infrastructure and developments is changing fast, and for the better. Part of that change is driven by climate change and some of it is due to technological developments which allow researchers to work more precisely and more intelligently than previously.
The case for a data-first culture
Oliver (Olly) Tones, Head of Data Sharing and Technology at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), recently highlighted that we are drowning in a sea of data in a way that we weren’t 10 years ago. He believes that the UK must create a data-first culture, and that it’s critical to ensure that leaders see data as essential.
He adds, “Curation and management are also required, to meet challenges such as data quality, its provenance, and to identify what makes the data valuable and makes it useable.”
A government-led programme for improved data use
In order to achieve this goal, DSIT is spearheading an exciting programme of work aimed at better and safer use of data in research and funded by the Digital Research Infrastructure programme from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
The Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI), a UKRI facility, was funded in 2017 to foster advanced research into national infrastructure including transport, water, energy and city-scale modelling, with initial funding from the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC).
DAFNI’s goal is to provide world-leading infrastructure systems research capabilities. It supports research into the resilience of UK infrastructure against threats, such as drought and flooding from new weather extremes driven by climate-change. DAFNI's data-sharing and modelling capabilities are central to enabling collaboration between government, town planners, and researchers across the UK.
A commitment to major infrastructure projects is a key plank of the current government’s agenda, placing DAFNI front and centre as a critical trusted independent data and collaboration platform for data and analytics for national infrastructure throughout the UK. Its work is also used overseas, with interest from Kenya to Korea.
Tackling barriers to data sharing
The potential of data to drive research and its impact on policy is under scrutiny in DAFNI’s latest research paper, ‘Data Infrastructure for National Infrastructure. A UK Research Data Cloud Pilot’. It represents the culmination of a pilot study for DSIT, exploring DAFNI’s work focused on national infrastructure systems within the UK, with a focus on energy, water and transport.
As the report explains, “Research into the evolution of infrastructure systems can have a real impact on the delivery of the strategic goals of government. Our work in use cases in this project has demonstrated that there can be multiple impacts of research; we highlight the potential contribution to the strategic goals of building a secure and resilient society, of boosting economic investment and innovation, and of ensuring the health of our environment.
“However, we have also seen the extent that problems in accessing and sharing data have impeded the interaction between researchers and partners in industry and government. Our participants have highlighted barriers to data sharing, particularly the priority that data suppliers give to sharing data safely and securely.”
Transforming data into an asset
DAFNI worked with a number of major research organisations on the project, including the UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities, who facilitated two workshops on data sharing which examined how the UK can transform its data into research assets that can be used to benefit society.
Discussions at the first workshop began with best practice in data gathering: best practice focuses on enabling data that is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Proportionality and purpose are established cornerstones of data gathering. However, the proliferation of digital and big data are testing these cornerstones, together with an increased recognition that the question being asked of data is not always known at the time the data is collected.
In the second workshop, the focus was on urban observatories and technology. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, smart sensors and other technological developments are aiding researchers in both collecting and analysing data. UKCRIC itself was an early initiator of the urban observatory model, with its first one established at Newcastle University in 2017, and now holding a total of six observatories across England, providing unique, real-world insights into how cities work and how they can be improved.
The sensors in the urban observatories gather continuous and near-continuous data on air quality, people and vehicle movements, water quality, and weather. Much has changed since UKCRIC first set up its urban observatories, with cities now frequently having sensors built into the fabric of their environments, such as sensors in bridges to monitor their condition.
These changing technological developments mean that data can now be used in new and innovative ways,and ultimately contribute to better government policies.
In the ‘Science and Technology Framework’, published in April 2025, DSIT unequivocally stated that “[Science and Technology] S&T is at the heart of the government’s ambitious agenda across the National Missions, the Industrial Strategy and our Plan for Change [the milestones for the Government Missions]. From the transition to clean energy or understanding the impact of climate change, to achieving safer streets, securing resilience against natural or malicious threats, tackling migration, or ensuring that every child can take advantage of educational opportunities – every area of government policy or operational activity is impacted by science, technology or engineering.”
Towards a National Data Cloud
Data is at the heart of science and technology and DAFNI’s work with DSIT, UKCRIC and other organisations in the recent research has delivered a vision for a future Data Infrastructure for National Infrastructure. This would deliver a Research Data Cloud to coordinate and sustain the management of data, so it can be shared with the academic sector while satisfying the concerns of data suppliers.
The necessary groundwork to make data interoperable, available and knowable is fundamental to the data cloud’s long-term sustainability. Without it, the data within the data cloud will not be sharable.
A significant feature of a National Data Cloud is enabling modelling across datasets and local, national and regional scales.
The platform for this already exists in DAFNI, with universities and university collaborations with government and private organisations already using DAFNI to help create improved infrastructure, bolster the resilience of the UK’s power, water and transport networks to climate extremes, and increase the accuracy of research scenarios used by central and local government.
Get involved
We invite researchers in academia to apply for an account on the DAFNI platform, where you can share your models and data with others (according to limits you set), and build on the models and work of existing users. We welcome approaches for collaborations with universities, local and national government, private organisations and others. Contact us at [email protected]
Read the ‘Data Infrastructure for National Infrastructure. A UK Research Data Cloud Pilot: Final Report’ at: https://epubs.stfc.ac.uk/work/61441110
