October 15, 2019
Initiative-supported UW Data Collaborative seeks to foster data sharing
Fostering collaboration and data sharing is the impetus behind the new UW Data Collaborative (UWDC), initiated and hosted by the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology and in partnership with the Population Health Initiative, Urban@UW and the Student Technology Fee program.
The collaborative seeks to broaden the potential impact of high-security confidential and proprietary datasets by making them more widely available to the University of Washington research community — without compromising their security and confidentiality. The datasets include information about individuals, households, communities and businesses culled from sources such as Gallup Micro-Level Polling Data, Medicare records, real estate transactions and large-scale federally funded surveys, such as the Adolescent Health Survey.
At the heart of the data collaborative is a modern computing cluster that provides access to restricted data in a secure and computationally sophisticated environment. The UWDC’s technical team of faculty and research staff also offer high-level technical capabilities in data assembly, record linkage, geographic information systems, data analysis and program evaluation.