Four year fully funded PhD Studentship in partnership with Ordnance Survey
We are recruiting one PhD student to carry out research in partnership with Ordnance Survey with a focus on Outdoor Leisure. Candidates are expected to have a background in geospatial information, computer science, psychology, human factors, digital cartography or crowd sourcing. Candidates with backgrounds in other STEM subjects will also be considered if they can demonstrate capabilities in data analytics. The studentship is only available to UK/Home and EU students resident in the UK for a minimum of 3 years.
Ordnance Survey supports the British consumer to “Get Outside” through digital offerings such as the OS Maps mobile/desktop application in addition to traditional paper map products. While a large part of this has been about enabling people getting out into the British countryside and national parks for outdoor leisure such as walking and cycling, OS is also interested in encouraging access to other forms of green space such as urban parks. However, it remains difficult to understand how people access and use these different outdoor spaces and therefore what to recommend to different consumers. OS Maps encourages sharing of experience through the sharing of walking and cycling routes.
Ordnance Survey has conducted research in recent years with Horizon and other partners into people’s narratives on social media about their activities in different places. The challenge in this PhD is to gather better information about consumers’ use of urban and rural greenspace to share with and to encourage others. Possible means of understanding this might be through interpretation of online narratives and/or active engagement with individuals and outdoor leisure communities. If successful, the project might also extend to making recommendations. The research would be expected to link geospatial information (in collaboration with Ordnance Survey) and personal, especially web and social media data (through Horizon supervisors).
