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This case study concerns the development and subsequent uptake of the Feature Selective Validation (FSV) method for data comparisons. The method has been adopted as the core of IEEE Standard 1597.1: a `first of its kind' standard on validation of computational electromagnetics and is seeing increasingly wide adoption in industry practice where comparison of data is needed, indicating the reach and significance of this work. The technique was developed by, and under the guidance of, Dr Alistair Duffy, who has remained the world-leading researcher in the field. The first paper on the subject was published in 1997 with key papers being published in 2006.
Targeted Projection Pursuit (TPP) — developed at Northumbria University — is a novel method for interactive exploration of high-dimension data sets without loss of information. The TPP method performs better than current dimension-reduction methods since it finds projections that best approximate a target view enhanced by certain prior knowledge about the data. "Valley Care" provides a Telecare service to over 5,000 customers as part of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and delivers a core service for vulnerable and elderly people (receiving an estimated 129,000 calls per annum) that allows them to live independently and remain in their homes longer. The service informs a wider UK ageing community as part of the NHS Foundation Trust.
Applying our research enabled the managers of Valley Care to establish the volume, type and frequency of calls, identify users at high risk, and to inform the manufacturers of the equipment how to update the database software. This enabled Valley Care managers and staff to analyse the information quickly in order to plan efficiently the work of call operators and social care workers. Our study also provided knowledge about usage patterns of the technology and valuably identified clients at high risk of falls. This is the first time that mathematical and statistical analysis of data sets of this type has been done in the UK and Europe.
As a result of applying the TPP method to its Call Centre multivariate data, Valley Care has been able to transform the quality and efficiency of its service, while operating within the same budget.
Advanced technologies for data visualisation and data mining, developed in the Unit in collaboration with national and international teams, are widely applied for development of medical services. In particular, a system for canine lymphoma diagnosis and monitoring developed with [text removed for publication] has now been successfully tested using clinical data from several veterinary clinics. The risk maps produced by our technology provide early diagnosis of lymphoma several weeks before the clinical symptoms develop. [text removed for publication] has estimated the treatment test, named [text removed for publication], developed with the Unit to add [text removed for publication] to the value of their business. Institute Curie (Paris), applies this data mapping technique and the software that has been developed jointly with Leicester in clinical projects.
PolySNAP is an extensive commercial computer program developed at WestCHEM to process and classify large volumes of crystallographic and spectroscopic data. It is a market-leading product sold and supported by Bruker Corporation (a manufacturer of scientific instruments for molecular and materials research selling products world-wide) and is used in laboratories throughout the world supporting business in the pharmaceutical, materials, mining, geology, and polymer science sectors. The PolySNAP software was and continues to be sold in combination with all Bruker x-ray powder diffractometers.
The security of data in printing and network environments is an area of increasing concern to individuals, businesses, government organisations and security agencies throughout the world. Mathematical algorithms developed at the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University represent a significant step-change in existing data security techniques. The algorithms enable greater security in automatic document classification and summarisation, information retrieval and image understanding. Hewlett-Packard (HP), the world's leading PC vendor, funded the research underpinning this development and patented the resulting software, with the aim of strengthening its position as the market leader in this sector of the global information technology industry. Hewlett Packard has incorporated the algorithms in a schedule of upgrades to improve the key security features in over ten million of their electronic devices. Accordingly, the impact claimed is mitigating data security risks for HP users and clients and substantial economic gain for the company.
Researchers in Cambridge have developed a data standard for storing and exchanging data between different programs in the field of macromolecular NMR spectroscopy. The standard has been used as the foundation for the development of an open source software suite for NMR data analysis, leading to improved research tools which have been widely adopted by both industrial and academic research groups, who benefit from faster drug development times and lower development costs. The CCPN data standard is an integral part of major European collaborative efforts for NMR software integration, and is being used by the major public databases for protein structures and NMR data, namely Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) and BioMagResBank.
Research at Lancaster led to a novel approach to detect the source of cases of campylobacteriosis (a bacterial foodborne disease). The application of this method to data from New Zealand pin- pointed that New-Zealand's high rate of cases was linked to the eating of contaminated poultry. These results were a key part of the evidence used by New Zealand's Food Safety Authority to introduce a new code of practice for the poultry industry. The impact of this code of practice has been a halving of the number of reported cases of campylobacteriosis in New Zealand (from around 16,000 cases in 2006 to less than 7,000 in 2008). With notification rates estimated as 1 in 10, this corresponds to around 90,000 fewer actual cases per year. The saving for the New Zealand economy during the REF census period has been independently estimated as between £100M and £150M.
In response to the deficiencies in bank risk management revealed following the 2008 financial crisis, one of the mandated requirements under the Basel III regulatory framework is for banks to backtest the internal models they use to price their assets and to calculate how much capital they require should a counterparty default. Qiwei Yao worked with the Quantitative Analyst — Exposure team at Barclays Bank, which is responsible for constructing the Barclays Counterpart Credit Risk (CCR) backtesting methodology. They made use of several statistical methods from Yao's research to construct the newly developed backtesting methodology which is now in operation at Barclays Bank. This puts the CCR assessment and management at Barclays in line with the Basel III regulatory capital framework.
This case study demonstrates the benefits achieved when the mathematical and computational aspects of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problem were brought together to work on real-world aerodynamic applications. While earlier insight on the solution reconstruction problem was purely based on empirical intuition, research in the School of Mathematics at the University of Birmingham by Dr Natalia Petrovskaya has resulted in the development of the necessary synthetic judgement in which the importance of accurate reconstruction on unstructured grids has been fully recognised by the CFD researchers at the Boeing Company. Boeing has confirmed that the research has led to substantial resultant improvements in their products as well as gains in engineering productivity. For instance, wing body fairing and winglets optimization for the Boeing 787 has been done by means of CFD only. Implementation of CFD in the design of their new aircraft allowed Boeing to reduce the testing time in the wind tunnel for the 787 aircraft by 30% in comparison with testing carried out for Boeing 777. Efficient use of CFD in the design of new aircrafts has helped the Boeing Company to further strengthen their core operations, improve their execution and competitiveness and leverage their international advantage.
Small area estimation (SAE) describes the use of Bayesian modelling of survey and administrative data in order to provide estimates of survey responses at a much finer level than is possible from the survey alone. Over the recent past, academic publications have mostly targeted the development of the methodology for SAE using small-scale examples. Only predictions on the basis of realistically sized samples have the potential to impact on governance and our contribution is to fill a niche by delivering such SAEs on a national scale through the use of a scaling method. The impact case study concerns the use of these small area predictions to develop disease-level predictions for some 8,000 GPs in England and so to produce a funding formula for use in primary care that has informed the allocation of billions of pounds of NHS money. The value of the model has been recognised in NHS guidelines. The methodology has begun to have impact in other areas, including the BIS `Skills for Life' survey.