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Centre for Digital Built Britain completed its five-year mission and closed its doors at the end of September 2022

This website remains as a legacy of the achievements of our five-year foundational journey towards a digital built Britain
 

Capability Framework and Research Agenda

One of the questions the Department for BEIS originally asked CDBB was - “what do we need to do to build a digital built Britain”? Since then, we conducted roughly two years of work - with over 90 researchers in six research networks, four consultancy studies and a series of workshops, to engage with a wide community of participants from across the UK. These groups were asked in various ways to discuss and explore what new knowledge, skills or capabilities the UK would need in order to bring about a digital built Britain, and the summary report presented our findings. The more detailed report that underpinned the summary is also available. Please note that the longer report is an interactive PDF to aid navigation - this is best experienced by downloading the report and using Adobe (or similar), rather than using web browser.
 
In compiling the reports, CDBB worked with academics from across a wide range of disciplines and UK institutions to consider the capabilities and research needed to create a digital built Britain and to answer three key questions:

  1. Capabilities: What capabilities do we need that we don’t already have?
  2. New research: What research might be required to underpin these capabilities?
  3. Existing knowledge: What research already exists that could be useful?

The summary presented a research landscape for a digital built Britain – an overview of the portfolio of research needed to underpin digital built Britain. Together the reports set out a long term research agenda for digital built Britain. They did not define the agenda for CDBB alone - we couldn’t address all of the issues raised in the report and indeed demonstrate that essential and valuable work was being done elsewhere already, so instead, we encouraged you to think of the reports as a call to arms for the UK.

The documents below comprised the Capability Framework and Research Agenda for digital built Britain as prepared and described by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB), participants in our various workshops and contributors to research networks and tender projects over the period 2018-2019. This project aimed to provide an overview of the types of capabilities. Together, these documents formed an evidence base from which numerous research programmes could embark. 

Summary Document 

Andy Neely, Jennifer Schooling, Charles Boulton and Kirsten Lamb 

Start with the summary for an overview of the Capability Framework and Research Agenda. It characterises the breadth of capabilities and research needed in order to deliver a digital built Britain.

Capability Framework and Research Agenda

Charles Boulton and Kirsten Lamb

Using evidence from academic and grey literature, CDBB’s research networks, tenders and workshops, the Capability Framework and Research Agenda discusses in depth the capabilities and research needed to deliver a digital built Britain. It can be read beginning to end, but it is also possible to use the tags, headings and index to dive into the detail and follow signposts to relevant bodies of literature. 

++++ Please note - for best results with the interactive links in this document please Click the link, then Download the file to use in Adobe directly. ++++

Supporting materials

The following reports and documents were prepared by or for CDBB and were referred to throughout the Capability Framework. Depending on the level of detail readers wish to explore, many of them are worth exploring in their own right. They were provided here as evidence to underpin the main documents, but also as a resource for future researchers who may wish to read the many insights resulting from the networks, tenders and workshops conducted in the development of this project.

Centres of Competence - July 2019

Research Landscape - May 2019

Sector Perspectives Report - July 2019

Network and Consulting Reports

Other Papers

Workshops

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