The University of Edinburgh is extending the reach of its data science knowledge to school pupils in its catchment area of south-east Scotland.
It is leading the way in a Scottish and UK government-backed initiative that also links to climate change. At the core of it is the use of internet of things (IoT) sensors to collect environmental data for analysis by primary and secondary school students to train the data scientists of tomorrow.
The £9.5m project, Data Education in Schools, is part of a £661m initiative called the Data-Driven Innovation Skills Gateway. This is part of a “city region deal” funding package, announced by the Scottish and UK governments in August 2018, which put in place a £1.35bn investment in Edinburgh and south-east Scotland over 15 years, covering transport, housing, culture, skills, employability and innovation.
The six local authorities of Edinburgh, Midlothian, East Lothian, West Lothian, Fife and the Scottish Borders are working with the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University to deliver the overall programme.
Simon Chapple, head of data technology at the University of Edinburgh, said in an interview with Computer Weekly: “The University is a lead principal agent in the city region deal, and where we fit in a little bit uniquely is with the programme I run for the IoT research innovation [activity at the University]”.
Chapple leads a small team that delivers the University’s IoT Service. This provides consultancy and development in research, learning, entrepreneurship and operations to the University and the region.
They have built a dedicated low-power wide area network for central Edinburgh, connected with a real-time data visualisation and analytics platform, built on the Elastic Stack technology set that includes Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash.
They are also developing a LoRaWAN (long range area WAN) IoT network to cover the 7,700 sqkm region of south-east Scotland, from Fife in the north to the Scottish Borders in the south. Within that, they deploy sensors to do environmental and biodiversity monitoring.
It’s these sensors that school pupils from the University’s broad catchment area are getting their hands on.
Chapple relates how pupils from 550 schools are deploying sensors in their local environments. As an example, he cites a presentation given by a group of female Primary 6 pupils from Roslin primary school, who also feature in an STV package on the launch of the IoT programme.
“They explained what they were doing in terms of indoor air quality monitoring, understanding how the CO2 level was building up in the class,” he said. “From that they’d link back to things like how much they’…….