Each year, our MSc Business Analytics students complete a project in partnership with an external organisation which forms the basis of their Term 3 dissertation. These student projects are undertaken in collaboration with start-ups, corporations, charities and public sector organisations, including local authorities.
In this blog, James Rapkin, Head of Organisational Insight & Intelligence at Barnet Council, shares his experience of working with UCL School of Management and outlines the specifics behind this particular student project. James also tells us why he plans to work with our MSc Business Analytics students again this year.
about barnet council
Barnet Council is a local authority responsible for delivering a range of vital services for people and businesses in Barnet. Some of these services are well known, such as schools, housing and planning, street lighting and refuse collection. Barnet Council also looks after many of the most vulnerable people in our society, such as children in care and adults who either need support to live independently or who are not able to do so.
Barnet Council also has a responsibility for a number of regulatory functions such as registrar services, licensing and food safety. Barnet Council is run by elected councillors who represent their local communities and make important decisions about services and the council’s priorities. These decisions are implemented by permanent council staff who deliver services on a daily basis.
what question was investigated through the student consulting project?
We understand that criminal activity does not occur evenly across an area. It will occur more in some areas than others and this can impact peoples’ lives and their behaviour. For this project, we wanted to investigate patterns of crime to identify hotspots within Barnet and understand the possible underlying causes to explain why criminal activity is concentrated in specific areas.
This was a multi-faceted project as the student would be responsible for finding suitable data, conducting a spatial cluster and correlation analysis and producing an interactive report and dashboard for engaging with service stakeholders.
were there any challenges or changes during the project?
Our main challenge was finding data to a small enough geographic level that would allow us to identify hotspots. For this project, we were relying on a range of publicly available datasets, such as the Police’s open data portal and the Census 2021 results from the Office for National Statistics. This added some complexity to the project, requiring us to perform geospatial data matching across various geographic levels.
what value has the project brought to your organisation?
This project allowed us the time to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the available data for identifying crime hotspots and assessing correlations with a variety of other datasets. We have been able to use this student project as the basis for two subsequent projects.
One project will look at whether it is possible to predict future anti-social behaviour hotspots and so allocate resources more efficiently and the second project will use the findings of this student project to inform a Local Area Profile Tool for responding to new licensing requests.
how were you able to support our student? what do you think our student gained from the experience?
It was a pleasure working with the placement student. During their time with us, we provided the student with regular supervision and support, and we were able to integrate the student into our team where they could ask for guidance from other data professionals and hear about other data projects that were in progress within the council.
how was the experience overall?
It was a great experience, and we plan to work with UCL again this year to support another placement student. I would highly recommend this project.
would you like to work with us?
If you would like to find out more about our MSc Business Analytics student projects, please reach out to Tracey Phillipson, view our webpage, or register your interest.