Global Challenges Academy

Staff Profile

Professor Philip James

Professor of Urban Data

Background

Background

My research encompasses the use of urban data, especially real-time data, in addressing urban challenges such as urban mobility, air pollution, carbon reduction. I lead the Urban Observatory Programme in Newcastle, one of the largest programmes of urban environmental monitoring in Europe. My work crosses discipline boundaries in engineering, computing science and increasingly into policy and evidence. 


Roles and Responsibilities

I head the Geospatial Engineering Group as part of the Engineering School. I am a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alan Turing Institute. I sit on a number of advisory and expert panels including:


  • Cyber and Local Digital Monitoring and Evaluation Expert Advisory Group (UK Government Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities DLUHC)
  • Secure Connected Places External Advisory Group (UK Government Department for Science Innovation and Technology DSIT)
  • NERC Digital Research Infrastrucure Investment Board (UKRI)
  • Floods and Droughts Research Infrastructure Community Advisory Group (NERC)
  • UKCRIC Executive Board Member (UK Collaboratorium for Research on Infrastructure and Cities)
  • DAFNI Governance Board Member (Data Analysis Facility for National Infrastructure)


Qualifications 

BA (Hons) Japanese (Newcastle, 1991) 

Industrial Experience

I work closely with a large number of industrial stakeholders including Northumbria Water, Siemens, the Ordnance Survey, the Environment Agency and others. Through the Observatory programme we work with national and local stakeholders including the combined authorities.

Google Scholar: Click here.

Research

Research Interests 

I am interested in all aspects of data management. I have an abiding interest in maps, mapping and spatial data systems and the development of information systems (primarily on the web) and fundamental research in the fusion and integration of data for analytics and visualisation. I currently lead the Urban Observatory programme in Newcastle, a multi-million pound investment in sensing infrastructure providing millions of observations about the city. I am interested in managing and developing big data systems and developing novel ways of integrating data for research and enabling data access in a variety of ways. I am developing new systems to understand how smart cities could and should operate both at a technical level but also through citizen participation and governance and sustainability processes.


Esteem Indicators

Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society

Program Vice Chair IEEE International Conference on Smart Cities and Informatizatuon (ISCi)

Chartered Geographer (CGEOG/GIS)

Reviewer EPSRC Standard Proposals

Organiser, international visit to Argonne Labs, Chicago University Urban Big Data Centre

Co-convenor and organiser International Urban Living Labs Symposium, Newcastle

EEO/AGI(S) Professional Seminar Series Invited speake

External Examiner PhD UCL

Invited Keynote Innovations In Environmental Monitoring international conference, York

IET Big Data Workshop Invited speaker

Invited Speaker, Roadmaps for Energy, Newcastle upon Tyne

Invited speaker Northumbrian Water Innovation Week

Invited speaker IoT Things Happening, Wuthering Bytes, Yorkshire

Reviewer International Journal of GIS

Google Span Design (Newcastle) workshop invited speaker

Reviewer Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing

Reviewer Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Multimedia, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT)

Co-organiser GISRUK 2019 Conference (Newcastle)

Connected City/Digital Newcastle

Funding 

  1. 2018 Research England CCF, Rebuscov: Removing Operational, Infrastructural and Entry Barriers to Urban Scale Computer Vision Deployments (REBUSCOV) (£100,000), (PI: P.James)
  2. 2018 Research England CCF, RUBICON: Removing Barriers to air quality IOt moNitoring in Cities, (£101,000), (PI: P James)
  3. 2018 Research England Promoting the Internet of Things via Collaborations between HEIs & Industry (£4.9m) Theme lead for Smart Cities and Newcastle PI
  4. 2018 Department for Transport Transport Technology Research Innovation Grant, Detecting the impact of vessels on air quality using emissions monitoring systems (£30K)
  5. 2017 UK Natural and Environmental Research Council (NE/R014884/1) Novel low-cost methods for marine mammal and environmental monitoring (£400K) (PI: Dr Per Berggren)
  6. 2017 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/R013411/1) CORONA: City Observatory Research platfOrm for iNnovation and Analytics (Total Award £1m PI Phil James)
  7. 2017 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P028527/1) IMAGINE: Innovative technologies for rapidly surveying, mapping and communicating waterborne hazards (GCRF: Total Award: £477,153)
  8. 2017 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P025641/1) Learning from Earthquakes: Building Resilient Communities Through Earthquake Reconnaissance, Response and Recovery (Total Award £ 457,939)
  9. 2017 UK Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC NE/P017134/1) Flood-Prepared: Predicting Rainfall Events by Physical Analytics of REaltime Data (Total award £1,523,519)
  10. 2017 UK Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC Public Engagement) The science of carbon capture: creating a carbon capture garden at Newcastle Science Central for people and nature (Total award £16,924)
  11. 2017 UK Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC NE/P016952/1) Catchment Risk Assessments using Multi-Scale Data (CARISMA) (Total award £161,827)
  12. 2016 UK Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC GCRF NE/P015476/1) Building REsilience to Multi-source Flooding in South/Southeast Asia through a Technology-informed Community-based approach (REMATCH) (Total award £167,389)
  13. 2016 UK Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC SHEAR NE/P000681/1) Landslide Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment, Preparedness and Early Warning in South Asia: Integrating Meteorology, Landscape and Society (LANDSLIP) (Total award £881,560 NCL £114,347, 2016 ~ 2020)
  14. 2016 UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure & Cities (UKCRIC) (EP/P016782/1, EP/P016707/1) Urban Observatory Total award £14m (ci James £1.6m 2016 ~ 2021) (UKCRIC PIs Prof Richard Dawson, Prof Stephanie Glendinning)
  15. 2016 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC EP/N01426X/1, £584,269, PI Dr Paolo Missier (01/02/2016 ~ 31/01/2019) ReComp: sustained value extraction from analytics by recurring selective re-computation
  16. 2015 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC Digital Economy EP/M023001/1, £4 million, £286,569 CI James) Digital Economy Research Centre, 2015 , 4 years of RA development time to work on projects relating to urban sensing. (PI Prof. Patrick Olivier)
  17. 2013 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (2013 , EPSRC: Digital Economy Sustainable Society Network EPSRC: EP/K003593/1, £50K) – Integrating Twitter and Urban Flooding ( iTURF) developed real-time systems to integrate tweets about flooding (location and intensity) into GPU based real-time flood modelling. (PI Prof Qiuhua Liang)
  18. 2012 UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council (2012 , EPSRC EP/J501359/1) Long Term Urban Research Framework (LTURF) Led WP on development of integrated systems architecture for management of heterogeneous sensor systems and the dissemination and visualisation of the data. (PI Prof. Richard Dawson)
  19. 2012 Climate Change Development Network (UK Department for International Development), (2012-2015, CDKN (DfID), £664K (200K)) (CDKN: RSGL-0024H), Led development of climate web portal and underlying data and processing infrastructure for Caribbean region. (PI Dr Aidan Burton/Prof Chris Kilsby)
  20. 2012 UK Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, (2012~2013, DEFRA, £125k) led WP on development of embedded models of Source Apportionment of Pollution within a mapping and GIS framework (PI Dr Adam Jarvis)
  21. UK Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, UKCP09 Data Delivery Program (2007-2010, DEFRA, £2m (£400k Newcastle)) led the development team responsible for UKCP09 data and processing portal (PI Prof. Chris Kilsby)


Teaching

I teach GIS and Informatics across a number of schools and 2 faculties and participate in 3 field courses annually.

Undergraduate Teaching

CEG1702 Introduction to GIS (module leader 70%)

CEG1710 Introduction to GIS (module leader 70%)

CEG1713 Informatics 1 (module leader 100%)

CEG2722 Informatics 2 (module leader 70%)

CEG 3701 GIS Fieldcourse (module leader 60%)

I also make significant contributions to CEG1711, CEG2712, CEG1604 & CEG1714

Postgraduate Teaching

CEG8702 GIS Fundamentals (module leader 100%) 

CEG8705 GIS (module leader 100%)

Publications