Big data leads to big ideas

The first project of Adelaide’s Living Lab with MIT will be to help the South Australian Government boost the visitor economy – and bring more jobs to the state

Lot Fourteen, Adelaide, South Australia

The first project of Adelaide’s Living Lab with MIT will be to help the South Australian Government boost the visitor economy – and bring more jobs to the state

As the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) big data laboratory sets up at Adelaide’s Lot Fourteen, its first project will be to support the bold ambition of the South Australian Government to grow the visitor economy and create new job opportunities within the state.

Tourism is a key contributor to South Australia’s economy, with visitor expenditure reaching $8.6 billion in the year to December 2018, helping to create 5000 jobs within the sector. The Government’s South Australian Visitor Economy Plan, released early last month, aims to grow the visitor economy further, reaching a target of $12.8 billion by 2030 and generating an additional 16,000 jobs.

The Living Lab, sponsored by BankSA, will take advantage of MIT’s world-leading work in data analysis and understanding social behaviour to guide government decisions and develop insights with commercial outcomes. The labs have already produced valuable information in Istanbul, Beijing and Andorra, with researchers analysing data across areas such as tourism, innovation, energy, environment, mobility and dynamic urban planning to transform these countries and meet their future urban challenges.

“There are a lot of tourism similarities between Andorra and South Australia,” says BankSA Chief Executive Nick Reade. “Tourism is a large contributor to the Andorran economy: through their summer season they have a range of sporting and cultural events that draw visitors into the city. And so we hope that adopting similar approaches and analysis, and using a range of data that MIT has used in the Living Labs, will provide a range of new and different insights into South Australia. In Andorra, this has helped them in how they promote tourism, enable visitors to get around and improved the experience of visitors.”

In support of South Australia’s visitor plan, the Living Lab can extract indicators such as flows of new tourists, revisitation patterns, tourist externalities on transportation congestion, spatial distribution, economic impact, and profiling of tourist interests. “The opportunity for the Living Lab is really about providing a different lens of insight to enable broader, deeper analysis and remove any roadblocks that may exist with visitor experience within the state, and potentially show people differences and connect them with interests they may not be aware of while they may be visiting for one purpose,” Reade says.

One of the key events the lab will explore during South Australia’s “Mad March” period is Adelaide’s internationally acclaimed annual Fringe, which last year generated a 19.3 per cent increase in visitor expenditure to $29.5 million, and a record $90.6 million in gross economic expenditure for South Australia. “Looking at tourist behaviours and visitor numbers and understanding those deeper, we hope to be able to provide insight into the Fringe that can enable it to continue the significant growth it has generated over the past 14 years that BankSA has been the sponsor,” Reade says.

The lab’s insight will come from MIT researchers working with partners including BankSA, Optus Business and DSpark to analyse de-identified data from mobile phones, banking services, government transactions and other sources, providing a deep vein of information that can reveal the latest trends, issues and behaviours of South Australia’s population and its visitors. “Our role is to combine the learning that we’ve had over the past decade from different living labs, to be able to improve various civic systems in South Australia,” MIT’s Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland says. “It’s about figuring out better ways to invest scarce resources.”

As the head of an entrepreneurship program at MIT, Prof Pentland also sees the lab providing opportunities for new types of businesses. “What I see is, when you make these open data resources available, there’s all sorts of opportunities for new types of transportation companies, delivery and health companies,” he says. “Usually what we find is that the hardest thing for a young company is finding that first customer, and often the first customer is a big company.”

He says the incubator model has worked well to form a “connection between university students who are about to get out in the world and are passionate about doing something, and the big guys who have needs and opportunities and cash flow for the young company”.

Reade is also optimistic about the potential for growth the Living Lab will bring to look at other key issues such as population growth and infrastructure planning. “It’s really about once we start to get insights, being open, sharing and drawing a bigger partner group through into activity and enabling growth and spin-off opportunities,” he says.

The State Government says the project will inform decision making for government projects, industry projects and future prosperity. Individual privacy is to be safeguarded during the collation and development of insights from the data, which Premier Steven Marshall says will be made available to the public. “It will improve productivity and, most importantly, create more jobs right here in SA,” he says.

Reade says the Living Lab is a unique opportunity. “It’ll be a small group of people with a big impact. This is about researching, analysing and creating interventions to create jobs,” he says. “The power in the Living Lab lies in being able to pinpoint what the roadblocks are and generate valuable insights to propel the state forward.”

Prof Pentland says the MIT’s role with the Living Lab is to do itself out of a job. “We’re good friends but you want local people to do it,” he says. “We won’t be touching the individual level data, we’ll be helping people set up systems and giving them software to help them do it, working with local people to do the analysis.

“We are excited about getting into this and seeing how we can make the world a better place.”

Data to provide big insights for growth

The recent announcement of a Living Lab to be established at Adelaide’s Lot Fourteen is significant.

It will be the first of its kind in Australia. We’ll be working with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recently named the number one university in the world. And it has the potential to make a real and significant input to decision-making on key issues in South Australia.

It is also a great example of how business and government can work together to progress better outcomes for our state, with the benefit of insights from big data.

In today’s economic environment, with its various challenges and opportunities, we need to be bold and do things differently than we have in the past to unlock growth in our economy.

Data is now considered one of the most important commodities in the world, providing powerful insights for governments, businesses and consumers. 

In fact, The Economist asserts that data is to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change.

Here in South Australia, we have an ambitious goal to lift economic growth to 3 per cent.

The power in the Living Lab lies in being able to use large amounts of de-personalised, aggregated data from diverse sources, often termed ‘big data’, to pin point the roadblocks, and identify valuable opportunities and insights for growth.

We can use the Living Lab to generate insights and plans to address a range of key issues such as population growth, jobs growth, transport network efficiency, investment, tourism - ensuring it is done with full insight and planning, for long-term sustainability and prosperity.

We’ve seen success in the work these labs have undertaken overseas in places like Beijing, Istanbul, New York City, and Andorra.

In another example, MIT has seen early success in working with the Canadian Government to roll out an education program for small businesses to learn how to use data to grow their businesses.

After the first course alone, 15 per cent of participants reported starting new businesses and hiring new people, prompted simply through the sharing of information and data.

The Living Lab is an opportunity to have some of the best minds in the world working with us to pin point key the challenges and opportunities for our state.

That’s why BankSA is backing Adelaide’s Living Lab. We’re excited by the opportunity ahead of us and we need to ensure South Australia is a leader in using insights and data to grow our economy.

Originally published as Big data leads to big ideas