Warwick Sphere - A knowledge mapping tool

Industry Partners

SDG-Driven Market Insights: Identify global research trends, innovation hotspots, and gaps in sustainability sectors.
Impact Amplification: Visualize and communicate your company’s contributions to SDGs through custom dashboards for ESG reporting or stakeholder engagement.

Professional Services

Event intelligence: build targeted attendee lists for global conferences or policy forums by analyzing SDG-aligned expertise, collaboration patterns, and institutional strengths.
Expert Sourcing: Rapidly identify researchers, thought leaders, or practitioners worldwide for media commentary, policy advisory roles, or technical consultations.

Academic Research

Global Collaboration Engine: Map co-author networks, institutional partnerships, and funding landscapes to accelerate interdisciplinary projects.
SDG Gap Analysis: Identify underfunded or under-researched SDGs (e.g., SDG 14: Life Below Water) and connect with stakeholders to address them.
Funding Strategy Support: Match your research outputs with global funding calls, philanthropic initiatives, or policy priorities.

Marketing and communications

Expert Sourcing:Quickly identify researchers for media commentary, podcasts, or thought leadership articles.
Impact Storytelling:Create compelling visuals (infographics, maps) to showcase research impact for press releases, social media, or annual reports.
Audience Targeting:Map global stakeholders or influencers aligned with your campaigns using research and collaboration networks.

Horizon Scanning for Strategic Processes

Trend Forecasting:Identify emerging research fields, policy shifts, or societal challenges (e.g., AI regulation, climate migration).
Opportunity Mapping:Highlight gaps in funding, collaboration, or innovation to guide institutional strategy.
Scenario Planning Workshops:Co-create future-ready strategies using data-driven insights.

Baseline and Benchmarking for teaching

Curriculum Alignment:Compare teaching modules against global academic trends or industry needs.
Performance Metrics:Benchmark student outcomes, research-integrated teaching, or interdisciplinary course uptake against peer institutions.
Innovation Gap Analysis:Identify opportunities to modernize pedagogy or incorporate emerging topics (e.g., sustainability literacy).

IGSD Knowledge Mapping Project

Why do we need this ?

Use Cases

Cross-Faculty Collaboration

What We Offer:

Interdisciplinary Synergy Mapping: Identify overlapping research themes across departments or institutions (e.g., AI + healthcare, climate policy + urban design).
Global Partnership Building: Connect researchers from different disciplines or geographies to co-design projects tackling complex challenges. Themed network graph generation.

On-Demand Reports

Custom Analytics: Generate targeted reports for audits, funding applications, or competitive benchmarking (e.g., tracking nanotechnology trends across Europe).
Impact Assessments: Quantify and visualize the societal, economic, or academic impact of research clusters or partnerships.
Strategic Insights: Deliver foresight reports on emerging fields, policy shifts, or institutional strengths/weaknesses.

Bespoke Data Visualisation Projects

Custom Dashboards:Design interactive tools for real-time tracking of research outputs, partnerships, or KPIs (e.g., a live map of global clinical trial collaborations).
Policy/Advocacy Visuals:Create compelling infographics, heatmaps, or network diagrams for NGOs, governments, or conferences.
Funding Proposal Support:Develop visuals to strengthen grant bids, such as timelines showing project alignment with global priorities.

Upcoming Roadshows

4 of these

Introduction and Overview

The IGSD Visualisation Project is designed to map and visualise Warwick’s research contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This pilot project uses data-driven visualisations to support strategic planning, strengthen interdisciplinary collaborations, and highlight Warwick’s role in addressing global challenges. By exploring research outputs, collaborations, and partnerships, the project identifies opportunities for growth and showcases the University’s contributions to sustainable development.

Use Cases

Mapping Research Outputs: The project visualises research outputs across departments and faculties, helping to highlight contributions to SDGs. It enables the University to assess areas of strength and focus, while supporting a more integrated approach to interdisciplinary research.

Cross-Faculty Collaboration: The visualisations facilitate connections between researchers working across different faculties and disciplines, encouraging collaborative work.

Global Collaborations: By mapping Warwick’s international partnerships, the project provides an insight of the University’s global research network, helping to identify key partners and thematic areas of focus.

The project also aims to identify areas where Warwick’s contributions to SDGs could grow, supporting researchers in expanding into underrepresented areas.

One of the key applications of the IGSD Visualisation Project is in supporting the planning of research funding events. By using advanced data visualisation and mapping tools, the project helps researchers and departments to:

Identify potential collaborators: Explore existing networks within and outside Warwick to foster interdisciplinary and cross-faculty research.
Find funding opportunities: Match research outputs with relevant funding calls, such as those available on the UKRI website.
Map stakeholders: Visualise stakeholders involved in specific research themes or clusters, helping to develop targeted funding proposals.

The IGSD tool also helps in identifying underrepresented areas of research, such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with less publications (e.g., SDG 5 or SDG 14). These insights can drive strategic discussions and decision making during funding events to prioritize research in these critical areas.

Features

Categorized Research Outputs: Analyse Warwick’s research aligned with SDGs, with a breakdown by department, faculty, and geographic region.
Author Networks: Explore the co-author networks of Warwick researchers, enabling better understanding of collaborative patterns across the University and beyond.
Global Collaboration Maps: Highlight Warwick’s international partnerships and their contributions to research and policy.
Tailored Visualizations: Develop customised outputs for use in research evaluations, strategic planning, and funding proposals.

Examples below:

Figure 1: This is a 4x4 bar chart grid of the 16 SDGs, showing the top 10 countries that Warwick has collaborated with per SDG since 2015.

Figure 2: This is a stacked bar chart showing the publication output from WBS, with the blue sections indicating the number of publications that have been mapped to at least 1 SDG, and the grey bar showing the publications that did not map to any SDG.

Upcoming Roadshows and Focus Areas

Join our upcoming roadshow to explore how Warwick departments can foster interdisciplinary research collaborations and tackle underrepresented Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Research Collaborations: Discover opportunities to connect with other faculties and global collaborators through data-driven insights.
Addressing Underrepresented SDGs: While a significant portion of Warwick’s research aligns with SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), our tool highlights areas for expansion into other SDGs, such as SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).

Collaborations and Feedback Collection

We are looking for departments to collaborate with. If this service is relevant to your department, please contact:

Dr Feng Mao: Feng.Mao@warwick.ac.uk

Jason Adams: Jason.Adams.1@warwick.ac.uk