Today, 'Big' customer retail market data are created in many areas, including grocery retailing, energy, health and wellbeing, insurance, mobile communications and retail banking. Such data represent ever greater proportions of the total data collected about citizens and are almost exclusively accumulated by the private sector. Analysis of such sources can offer many new insights into contemporary lifestyles. Our vision is to create a service that will open up the data resources routinely collected by the retail business sector to academic research, training and capacity building. Crucially, this will be done in ways that users in academia, business and government will find efficient, effective and safe to use. Retail Business Datasafe (RBDS) will allow users to access new sources of data from organisations, and receive authoritative advice on such data and their quality and the ways in which they can be linked to official surveys, administrative data or social media sources. There will also be a full and novel range of related Big Data research training and capacity building activities, developed in close association with the retail industry. RBDS will provide focus for ESRC's interests in the retail sector and its commitments to capacity building in relation to Big Data research skills. It will also develop a wider service role for other social science research that will benefit from the availability of consumer data. RBDS will do this by building upon the recent achievements of the ESRC Retail Research and Data Initiative, in order to develop a sustainable national partnership between the academic, retail and government sectors. This will foster the co-production of skills and knowledge and see the wider deployment of consumer data in academic, business and government research. As such, RBDS will be a strategic and complementary initiative to the ESRC's investments in Big Data centres for administrative and social media data by collating different retail datasets safely and anonymously for research purposes. In this radical and transformative initiative, RBDS will work with retailers to devise and implement data services that provide safe and effective access for the academic, business and government communities, and engage the retail industry in problems of common concern. The work will build on the recommendations of the Administrative Data Taskforce (ADT) with respect to release, security and anonymisation. It will also link to best practices for scientific analysis and visualisation of retail data in the United States, propelling the UK to world leadership in reuse of consumer data for the public good. The advent of Big Data in social science applications has led to a growing need for capacity to undertake research using large, complex and linked datasets. To this end, RBDS will develop a range of advanced training and CPD initiatives that will foster collaboration with a full range of academic disciplines, and provide businesses with access to researchers and skills through knowledge exchange opportunities. RBDS will also facilitate linkage of data generated and held by the UKDS and other ESRC Big Data centres with those from the private sector. A fundamental problem with Big Data arising from retail transactions, in common with many sources, is that their provenance is unknown. RBDS will thus develop methods and use other Data Centre investments to assess the robustness and reliability of retailer data relative to administrative and other official data sources. RDBS will work with the UK Data Service (UKDS) to preserve data that will provide retailers and academics alike with insights into medium and long term trends in retailing. Its split site location will be shared by the UCL Chorley Institute (an open plan office environment dedicated to multidisciplinary research), in dedicated refurbished space at the University of Liverpool and in the Oxford Institute of Retail Management.

The UK is committed to a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% before 2050. With over 40% of fossil fuels used for low temperature heating and 16% of electricity used for cooling these are key areas that must be addressed. The vision of our interdisciplinary centre is to develop a portfolio of technologies that will deliver heat and cold cost-effectively and with such high efficiency as to enable the target to be met, and to create well planned and robust Business, Infrastructure and Technology Roadmaps to implementation. Features of our approach to meeting the challenge are: a) Integration of economic, behavioural, policy and capability/skills factors together with the science/technology research to produce solutions that are technically excellent, compatible with and appealing to business, end-users, manufacturers and installers. b) Managing our research efforts in Delivery Temperature Work Packages (DTWPs) (freezing/cooling, space heating, process heat) so that exemplar study solutions will be applicable in more than one sector (e.g. Commercial/Residential, Commercial/Industrial). c) The sub-tasks (projects) of the DTWPs will be assigned to distinct phases: 1st Wave technologies or products will become operational in a 5-10 year timescale, 2nd Wave ideas and concepts for application in the longer term and an important part of the 2050 energy landscape. 1st Wave projects will lead to a demonstration or field trial with an end user and 2nd Wave projects will lead to a proof-of-concept (PoC) assessment. d) Being market and emission-target driven, research will focus on needs and high volume markets that offer large emission reduction potential to maximise impact. Phase 1 (near term) activities must promise high impact in terms of CO2 emissions reduction and technologies that have short turnaround times/high rates of churn will be prioritised. e) A major dissemination network that engages with core industry stakeholders, end users, contractors and SMEs in regular workshops and also works towards a Skills Capability Development Programme to identify the new skills needed by the installers and operators of the future. The SIRACH (Sustainable Innovation in Refrigeration Air Conditioning and Heating) Network will operate at national and international levels to maximise impact and findings will be included in teaching material aimed at the development of tomorrow's engineering professionals. f) To allow the balance and timing of projects to evolve as results are delivered/analysed and to maximise overall value for money and impact of the centre only 50% of requested resources are earmarked in advance. g) Each DTWP will generally involve the complete multidisciplinary team in screening different solutions, then pursuing one or two chosen options to realisation and test. Our consortium brings together four partners: Warwick, Loughborough, Ulster and London South Bank Universities with proven track records in electric and gas heat pumps, refrigeration technology, heat storage as well as policy / regulation, end-user behaviour and business modelling. Industrial, commercial, NGO and regulatory resources and advice will come from major stakeholders such as DECC, Energy Technologies Institute, National Grid, British Gas, Asda, Co-operative Group, Hewlett Packard, Institute of Refrigeration, Northern Ireland Housing Executive. An Advisory Board with representatives from Industry, Government, Commerce, and Energy Providers as well as international representation from centres of excellence in Germany, Italy and Australia will provide guidance. Collaboration (staff/student exchange, sharing of results etc.) with government-funded thermal energy centres in Germany (at Fraunhofer ISE), Italy (PoliMi, Milan) and Australia (CSIRO) clearly demonstrate the international relevance and importance of the topic and will enhance the effectiveness of the international effort to combat climate change.