Research Associate in Visualization Co-Design (2024-2025)

The UK Co-Benefits Atlas project—run by researchers from Design Informatics, the School of Informatics, the University of St. Andrews and the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute—is seeking a research associate (grade 7) for around 25-30% FTE between now and July 2025.

The project envisions facilitation and co-design of an interactive web-based data interface, the UK Co-benefits Atlas, to visualise emission reduction co-benefits on, e.g., health, energy bills and other measures, across the entire UK [1]. Inspired by our previous analysis of visualization atlases [2], this project will co-design and deploy a first version of the atlas, informed by extensive engagement with future atlas stakeholders such as the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods, PWC Sustainability, and Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. By the open data and analyses published through our atlas, we aim to inform decision making by:

• businesses seeking commercial net zero opportunities.
• communities and policy makers with net zero mandates.
• researchers and analysts examining the socio-economic co-benefits of net zero interventions.

The successful candidate will be embedded within the VisHub research group (vishub.net, Benjamin Bach) at Informatics and EFI as well as the ECCI (Andrew Sudmant) and closely work with all of the staff on the project (see below).

• [1] Sudmant, A., Boyle, D., Higgins‐Lavery, R., Gouldson, A., Boyle, A., Fulker, J., & Brogan, J. (2024). Climate policy as social policy? A comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of climate action in the UK. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 1-15.
• [2] Wang, J., Shu X., Bach B., Hinrichs U., (2024). Visualization Atlases: Explaining and Exploring Complex Topics through Data, Visualization, and Narration. Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.07483

Job Description

The main task of the job is to coordinate and run the stakeholder engagement with potential Atlas stakeholders partner institutions and to lead the co-design focus groups. The goal is to create a rich picture for the needs for communicating co-benefits data and then devise respective visualisation and user interface designs for the atlas.

Tasks and responsibilities

• Organise co-creation focus groups with industry and public sector stakeholders
• Conduct interviews with stakeholders
• Perform qualitative data analysis on interview and focus group results
• Plan and run usability evaluations with partners
• Help design graphical atlas interface, interactions, and visualisations

Required expertise

• Strong interest in co-benefits and data analysis
• Interview and questionnaire design
• Qualitative data analysis
• Workshop organisation, facilitation and qualitative data collection
• Visualization / UI design / graphics design

Bonus expertise

• Experience with stakeholder engagement
• Good writing and communication skills
• Advanced visualisation design and programming
• Web development

Some flexibility around scheduling can be negotiated as long as commitment averages 25-30% FTE over the project period.

The successful candidate needs to

• have the right to work in the UK for the entire duration of the project
• be physically working from the UK during the project
• Spend most of their time in Edinburgh and St. Andrews for workshops

Application

Send an email to bbach@ed.ac.uk & andrew.sudmant@ed.ac.uk including

• CV
• Short motivation statement detailing
  • Why you are interested in this project
  • How you expertise responds to the call
• Link to online portfolio, if available
• Link to publication list, if available (e.g., google scholar)
• Selected relevant publication, if appropriate

The position will be filled as soon as a suitable candidate is found.

Project Background

Current research from the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI), using a model developed for the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), finds that for every 1£ spent on climate change mitigation in the UK there are as much as 14£ of social benefits in the form of improved public health, better urban connectivity, and increased productivity. Here, we ask the question, How can we communicate these findings to inform and accelerate climate action?

To address this question, this project we will co-create an interactive web-based data interface—the UK Co-Benefits Atlas (UKCBA). UKCBA will make co-benefits data and analyses more accessible, understandable, and useful for businesses, investors, researchers, third sector organisations and policymakers across Scotland and the wider UK. Compared to traditional static reports and research papers, visualization atlases are a novel and comprehensive means that provide interactive visualisations, in-depth analyses, and contextual explanations to explore data in a structured and accessible way; for examples, see https://vis-atlas.github.io.

The ECCI modelling team, which is part of our project core-team (Dr. Andrew Sudmant), provides 17 co-benefits for >1000 possible climate interventions in 57,000 UK ‘datazones’ (lower-layer super output areas, LSOAs) across the UK. Funding the UKCBA will enable us to co-create an interactive visualization atlas with its future users and stakeholders; for this project we already have strong commitment from 9 Scottish partners across academia, business, and the public sector (see below), stating the need of such an atlas and which are highly invested in supporting the project through attending workshops and helping with its co-design. The result will be a collaboratively created, cutting-edge, and first-of-its-kind platform capable of facilitating interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations and decision making between diverse stakeholders around the complex socio-economic benefits of climate interventions.

[1] Sudmant, A., Boyle, D., Higgins‐Lavery, R., Gouldson, A., Boyle, A., Fulker, J., & Brogan, J. (2024). Climate policy as social policy? A comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of climate action in the UK. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 1-15. [2] Wang, J., Shu X., Bach B., Hinrichs U., (2024). Visualization Atlases: Explaining and Exploring Complex Topics through Data, Visualization, and Narration. Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Project partners

Below is a list of all partners. The details of each partnership can be found in the attached letters of support.

• Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods will contribute access to its cross-sectoral knowledge networks and £2,500 in direct financial support for the workshops.
• The Scottish Climate Intelligence Service will contribute knowledge and expertise and is eager to use the data from the program to support their work.
• The UK Improvement Service will be contributing knowledge and expertise, and networks and will use the UKCBA for their work on the Scottish Climate Intelligence service and other public programs they work on.
• The Sustainable Scotland Network (SSN) will be providing a platform to disseminate our work, SSN is interested to develop a longer term collaboration to support place-based climate action.
• The Data Lab at Edinburgh University is planning to support the program by providing a platform for the work and are interested to link this program of work with related programs they are supporting.
• The Partnerships Team at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute will provide data and knowledge and is interested to be a user of the data visualisations we create.
• PWC Sustainability will support the project by providing knowledge and by using their networks to spread the reach of the program.
• PropEco will support the program by providing knowledge and by helping to cocreate the visualisations and communication approaches.
• The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero will support the program to learn how co-benefits can support climate action.

Project staff

Benjamin Bach (https://vishub.net/bach) is a Reader in Design Informatics and Visualization at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh as well as a research scientist at the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) within the Bivwac Team, Bordeaux. His research analyses, designs, and evaluates visualization techniques for data analysis, exploration, and communication. Benjamin is co-leading the VisHub research group (https://vishub.net) at the School of Informatics and the Edinburgh Futures Institute. He will coordinate the design and co-creation part of the work, most of the time remotely from Bordeaux but joining for some of the workshops in Edinburgh.

Sean Field https://research-portal.st-andrews.ac.uk/en/persons/sean-field is Director of Policy for the Centre for Energy Ethics and he leads the Financial Pathways branch of the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy Homes and Livelihoods. Over the last several years his research examines the ethical, economic and financial valuation of energy resources.He also works as a Lead Analyst for the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero where he provides analytical leadership and strategic economic policy evaluation advice within its Local Net Zero Programme.

Andrew Sudmant (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=ouhz-GsAAAAJ&hl=en) is a researcher at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute. Andrew’s research focuses on quantifying and mapping the co-benefits of climate action in the UK. His work at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute and with other collaborators has led to the development of models that estimate social, economic, and environmental benefits from climate interventions. One notable finding from his latest research shows that for every £1 spent on climate mitigation, up to £14 in social benefits are realized, particularly in areas like public health and urban connectivity.

Jinrui Wang https://www.jinruiw.comis a PhD student at Design Informatics and the VisHub lab at the University of Edinburgh. Her research investigates and creates visualiztion atlases for large complex data sets and topics.

Alexis Pister is data visualization engineer working on visual analytics applications often applied to the humanities and using network, temporal, and spatial visualization techniques. He will support the atlas prototyping through web-development.