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5 minutes ago, Steven Zhang said:
Hi @Mark Birkin , thanks for the informative and yet high-level pesentation about the Digital Twin for UK population. I am gald to hear that real-time analaysis is on top of your list. Compared to real-time data, the census data has been a traditional source of social-demographic information. Can you see any oppotunity in the upcoming 2021 census? Especially, the application of more and more administrative data based census., which sits between the snapshot data and real-time data.
Hi Steven, Yes, as I am sure you are aware there has been a lot of discussion about beefing up the census from other sources including both administrative and commercial data, for example with the census providing a ‘population spine’ to which other things can be added. I clearly remember these discussions following the last census (2011) and if anything I would say things have progressed rather more slowly than I would have liked and expected. We may have to wait until 2031 for some real innovation here! Again, privacy and conflicting (commercial) interests big issues here, as well as biases in non-census data sets. But I do think covid is opening people’s eyes to the need for data which are both continuously updatable and greater breadth of coverage (e.g. in relation to behaviour, consumption, attitudes) than we get in the census.