Tag: Flows

Graduate Mobility and Closing the Productivity Gap for UK Cities

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There has been much discussion in recent years about the UK ‘productivity puzzle’: the shortfall in productivity between the UK and comparable EU states like Germany and France, with this gap widening in the last decade. One important perspective for understanding productivity relates to skills and education, and how well graduate skills are integrated with businesses and are helping to expand knowledge economy industries. This is where the UK has a distinct advantage due to the high number of world leading universities across the country. Yet this strong higher education base is not currently translating into sufficient numbers of productive graduate jobs in the UK.

The Foresight Government Office for Science has been investigating this topic, and recently published the Future of Cities: Graduate Mobility and Productivity report. I contributed to the report with data analysis on graduate flows from higher education institutions to workplaces using HESA data from 2013/2014.

There are several interesting aspects of the Foresight report. Firstly there is a strong city focus, which is vital when you see that productivity is highly city dependent, and has close links with regional patterns such as the north-south divide in the UK.

Productivity (Gross Value Added(GVA) per person employed) across British cities, 1981 and 2011 (Source Martin, Gardiner and Tyler 2014)
Productivity (Gross Value Added(GVA) per person employed) across British
cities, 1981 and 2011 (Source Martin, Gardiner and Tyler 2014)

The productivity gap at the city level is further linked to graduate flows. London dominates the UK as a graduate employer, both in absolute terms and in proportional flows from higher education institutions to workplaces. The scale of the labour market and graduate recruitment programs in London, as well as its reputation as an ‘escalator region’, all add to this huge reach.

LondonPropFlows_02
Data HESA Destination of Leavers Survey 2013/2014

Map1_TotalGraduates2_legendupdate Table

That is not to say however that other large city-regions do not also have significant national graduate flows. Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester all draw significant numbers of graduates, with respective strengths in industries such as advanced manufacturing, creative industries and financial services (note HESA data is at county level, with Birmingham part of West Midlands and Leeds part of West Yorkshire). This is the foundation on which future growth will build.

ManchesterPropFlows_01
Data HESA Destination of Leavers Survey 2013/2014
WestYorkshirePropFlows_01
Data HESA Destination of Leavers Survey 2013/2014
WestMidlandsPropFlows_01
Data HESA Destination of Leavers Survey 2013/2014

A second interesting aspect of the Foresight report is that it has been produced in collaboration with regional and local government agencies in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff. There are a number of initiatives in development to address key aspects of graduate employment, including:

• The Skills Engine being developed in Birmingham brings together a network of key players from the local area in order to improve the matching of demand for and supply of talent in the local economy.

• FASTTRACK is an initiative being tested by Leeds University to attract and assist graduate integration into small and medium-sized businesses in the region through placements and specially designed induction and training programmes.

• The Graduate Business Lounge builds on Bristol’s existing engagement in student enterprise to integrate existing graduate enterprise service providers and platforms to foster greater student entrepreneurship.

• New Economy Hubs in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester will take a multi-sector approach to understanding key economic growth areas at the city regional level.

• The GRAData Project, working with Leeds City Council and Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, aims to improve university and council use of national graduate data. The hope is that this will improve local careers support for students, and illuminate graduate mobility to enable the development of regional talent strategies.

These cities are well aware of the challenges in graduate skills and recruitment, and recent devolution processes are providing opportunities for improving graduate employment offers and addressing regional economy issues more generally. Data analysis and policy support are important is this role, with organisations set up such as New Economy Manchester and the University of Birmingham City REDI institute expanding.

For more details on the Foresight research, read the report here, and it is also worthwhile exploring the wider Foresight Future of Cities page.

 

 

Visualising Flows 2: the Global CO2 Emissions Supply Chain

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GlobalCarbonFlows_web

Every so often you come across a dataset that really amazes you in its richness and ability to change perspectives on understanding the world. One such dataset has been produced by academics at Stanford and Oslo tracing the global supply chain of CO2 emissions.

Traditionally emissions are attributed to countries depending on where fuels are burned- the point of production. This approach puts big industrial polluters like China at the top of the emissions pile. Yet globalisation means that we are linked into an increasingly complex web of trade that challenges a production-based understanding of emissions. A quarter of fossil fuel CO2 emissions can be considered as being embedded in manufactured goods that are consumed away from the point of production.

To address this issue Davis, Peters & Caldeira have created a database charting the global supply chain of CO2 emissions from extraction to production and finally to consumption. The database covers coal, oil, gas and secondary fuels traded by 58 industrial sectors in 112 countries for the year 2004. Even better, the entire database is available online.

Maps of the major carbon transfers included in the paper highlight firstly the massive flows from the energy rich Middle East and Russia, and secondly how production emissions from industrial countries such as China are ultimately driven by consumption in the affluent core of USA, Europe and Japan.

Davisetal_FlowMap

Being a mapping type, I feel that the flow maps in the paper miss out much of the amazing detail in the dataset, such as extraction to consumption flows within countries (half of all emissions). So I decided to put my visualisation skills to the test…

First up I produced a proportional bubble map of extraction and production, giving a good sense of the relative scale between countries. Economies with high levels of both extraction and consumption (e.g. USA and China) exploit their own energy resources and have large emission flows within their national boundaries. Other large consuming nations that lack energy resources (e.g. the EU,  Japan and South Korea) must import them.

GlobalCarbonBubble_web

Next I mapped the transfers of CO2 embedded in trade flows, using the same black-red colour scheme to indicate flow direction. While the visualisation is not as straightforward as the simpler flow map above, it gives a strong sense of the amazing complexity in global trade relationships and highlights clear patterns and structures.

GlobalCarbonFlows_web

Black lines emanate from the major energy exporters of the Middle East and Russia. Indeed the degree to which all of Europe is dependent on Russian energy is highly alarming. Major industrial countries act as intermediaries, both importing and exporting emissions. For instance China and Japan import energy and materials from the Middle East, Indonesia and Australia, then export manufactured products to the USA and Europe. The USA is top predator in the emissions food chain, spectacularly drawing in goods and resources from every corner of the globe and racking up over 25% of global emissions by consumption.

The data is for 2004, so some current trends like the strong growth of South America, continued growth of China and the strengthening relationships between China and Africa are not fully captured. Hopefully an update will come in the not too distant future.

On the cartography side, I went for the Azimuthal Equidistant projection to emphasise the close North America-Europe-Asia links. This projection is recognisable as the basis of the United Nations logo. Here however it is global capitalism and environmental exploitation drawing the world together like some kind of tightening noose. After another empty environmental conference at Rio+20, burning billions of tonnes of fossil fuels is set to remain a defining characteristic of our age.

Visualising Flows: Great Britain Journey-to-Work

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There have been some wonderful flow maps appearing online recently, such as Paul Butler’s global facebook friend’s map, and maps of global trade and flight patterns. Inspired by these, I’ve been mapping travel patterns in Great Britain using a similar “night-lights” visual style.

The above maps use data from the UK census connecting where people live to where they work, showing how transport flows form complex urban networks and extensive metropolitan regions. The data is at ward level, allowing a good level of detail:

EW_commuter_flows

Taking this visualisation further, a key issue for policy makers is how people travel, with private cars having greater energy, pollution and congestion impacts than alternatives. The final map below groups work trips into car, public transport and walking-cycling travel using an RGB colour scheme, creating a galactic effect (click for larger):

The aim of the visualisation is to put travel patterns in the context of the diverse urban scale and geography of Great Britain, and reveal the degree of regional variation.

The map really highlights how different London is in terms of its extensive regional public transport network, with the other major English conurbations like the West Midlands, Manchester and West Yorkshire being highly car dominant in comparison. The variation in public transport levels could be argued to relate to London’s massive size, yet the Scottish cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh perform well in public transport terms, despite being smaller than England’s northern cities.

Active travel modes of walking and cycling are generally minimal. The cities that do relatively well are the “cathedral cities” like Cambridge and York, with a few surprises like Hull.

The maps were created in ArcGIS using the XY to Line tool, then exported to Illustrator. A key aspect of such flow visualisations is that the thousands of overlapping flows add together to form denser links using a cumulative transparency effect. This is much easier to achieve using a vector graphics program such as Illustrator. Would be nice in a future post to add Northern Ireland and the Republic, and will get a data update with the 2011 census next year.