Benchmarking data for housing research

Sourcing a new ‘big dataset’ to identify, visualise, and monitor informal housing practices in Australia.

Investigators

  • Associate Professor Liton Kamruzzaman
    Monash Art, Design and Architecture
  • Prof Dickson Lukose
    Monash Data Future Institute
  • Prof Dharmalingam Arunachalam
    School of Social Sciences
  • Dr Sin Yee Koh
    School of Arts and Social Sciences (Monash Malaysia)

Funded by

  • Monash Data Future Institute (MDFI) seed funding

Undertaken within

Monash Urban Lab

Findings from this study will serve as a data guide for researchers and policy makers interested in housing policy and planning.

Associate Professor Liton Kamruzzaman

Researchers around the world use a range of data sources to study housing (informality). However, there is a lack of benchmarking research about the availability of such datasets in Australia and alternative ways to address the data gaps (if any).

The project aims to answer the following four research questions:

  1. What data gaps exist for (informal) housing research in Australia?
  2. What could be the potential alternative data sources to study informal housing, and how to ensure their validity and useability in Australian policy and planning?
  3. How to effectively automate the sourcing, maintenance, interpretation, and visualisation of alternative data?
  4. What are the extent, trend, and patterns of informal housing practices in Australia?