Summary of the impact

A research project, embedded in the local community, unearthed multiple Iron Age treasures that have rewritten our understanding of the Iron Age to Roman transition in Britain. The discoveries directly inspired the South East Leicestershire Treasure project (SELT), which raised £934k funding (including 651K from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF)) for a major programme encompassing museum redevelopment, travelling exhibitions and a suite of learning resources. SELT initiatives have been enjoyed by over 270,000 members of the public, who through it have gained fascinating insights into our distant past. The find has also inspired a huge sense of community pride in a Leicestershire village and underlined the value of university involvement in local archaeology. The project was another important factor in the recent award of a Queen's Anniversary Prize.

Summary of the impact

New visualisation approaches have been used to turn complex data into actionable knowledge by:

• The Ministry of Defence to establish analytical possibilities for security critical data analysis
• Transport for London (TfL) to manage and extend London's successful Cycle Hire Scheme
• E.ON to interpret data produced through their modelling and in their Smart Home trial, with a view to understanding electricity consumption and reducing production
• Leicestershire County Council (LCC) to develop an evidence base for a sustainable transport plan; record and analyse the locations of locally valued green spaces; capture local knowledge about flooding events; monitor performance of children's centres; present the results of a survey on service quality and accessibility to citizens; undertake a £100M budget consultation and embed data in decision-making processes to inform policy
• Willis to understand and assess windstorm risk, communicate the complexity of risk to clients and manage risk across their global offices through a new software system.

These applications of new visualisation methods have had impact on the environment, economy, defence and security, society and public debate. In each case users of our methods report on their positive impact as we help them identify visualisation possibilities, understand their data and use this knowledge to inform their activity. In many cases our work has resulted in important insights, improved exploitation of data and further investment in visualisation with organisational implications in terms of using data for intelligence.