Conference Overview

The 2025 Digital Footprints Conference took place at the University of Leeds on the 14^th and 15^th May, bringing together a multi-sector audience under the central theme of public good. The conference continues to grow in strength and reach, with 98 delegates this year, including international attendees, and representatives from academia, industry, funding bodies, and other third sector organisations. This year we also secured sponsorship from Smart Data Research UK, the Consumer Lab, the Healthy and Sustainable Places Data Service, The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Bristol Jean Golding Institute.

The conference provided a unique and highly inter-disciplinary forum for attendees to discuss digital footprint data and it’s many and varied uses. We had an exciting line-up of invited speakers, who addressed topics such as building public trust, the power of partnerships, and navigating bias. We also heard a variety of case studies showcasing the practical application of digital footprints data for public good, both from research and industry, as well as successful collaborations across research and industry.  We received 39 abstract submissions, from which 5 were selected for workshop sessions, 8 for flash presentations, and 23 for poster presentations.

Early Careers Researchers (ECRs) remained a strong focus for the conference. Thanks to sponsorship this year, we were able to offer four ECR prizes for the best flash talks and poster presentations, along with a ‘People’s Choice’ prize for the best overall poster – voted for by delegates – open to both ECRs and non-ECRs. Notably, two in five accepted abstracts (across posters and flash talks) were presented by ECRs, and Dr Michael Sinclair delivered a thought-provoking invited ECR plenary on issues around the ethical use of GPS data in research.

Other plenary talks were delivered by Prof Michelle Morris and Anya Skatava, illustrating their motivation for founding this Digital Footprint community and conference through their research; Joe Cuddeford of Smart Data Research UK setting up how the UK is to become a world leader in smart data for public good; Hannu Koivisto from ŌURA in Finland discussing ‘From Sensor to Science: How ŌURA Transforms Wearable Data into Breakthrough Health Insights​’ and Cathy Capelin from the British Nutrition Foundation championing the Power of Partnerships.

Discussions were broadly focussed around three key themes of opportunities, challenges and future directions for the use of digital footprints data for public good.

Opportunities

Digital footprint data present an exciting balance of opportunity and challenge, and this was highlighted throughout the conference. These data are available at exceptionally large scales, and typically capture population activity longitudinally in real-time, allowing a powerful lens into human behaviours. We heard how these data present opportunities to evaluate real-world interventions and assess policy or environmental conditions. For example, we saw how supermarket loyalty card data are being used to evaluate supermarket interventions around promotion and placement of healthier and less-healthy foods.

Digital footprint data also provide opportunities for understanding the current status quo and predicting future trends. We saw how GPS data have been used to model resource use (e.g. green spaces and public transport) and mobility patterns. Consumer purchase data have been used to infer rates of health conditions and evaluate environmental footprints, and we saw other uses of digital footprint data to understand the affordability of net zero strategies, assess inequalities, identify at-risk groups and predict health outcomes such as cardiovascular age.

A particularly exciting opportunity discussed is the linkage between digital footprints data and longitudinal cohort studies. This will allow triangulation of traditional and novel data on population groups, allowing both opportunities to validate digital footprint data, as well as better understand cohort participants.  

Challenges

Despite these exciting opportunities, digital footprints data are not without their challenges, and this was another recurring theme of the conference. These data are almost always large and messy, and suffer from issues around representativity, quality and validity. Traditional research methods and statistical approaches are not suitable and novel techniques are needed. There are also considerable barriers to access, in terms of data sharing, infrastructure, and skills. The conference highlighted the importance of working together to overcome these challenges, and provided a valuable platform for sharing practical solutions and learnings and building collaborations to tackle these issues collectively.  

Ensuring public trust and ethical data use are critical to the success of unlocking the power of digital footprint data for public good. This theme was spoken about extensively by many, with a panel discussion around recent public dialogue work conducted by Smart Data Research UK. Ethical concerns centred on the hidden harms of smart data, such as wearable devices, consent, validity, and under-represented populations. There was broad consensus that early public engagement, transparency and accountability, alongside best practices for data security, such as the ’Five Safes’ are critical for ensuring public trust is built, and data are used safely and for genuine public good. The work by Smart Data Research UK revealed that when the purpose of work and the safeguards are explained, the public are generally supportive of digital footprint research.

Finally, we also discussed challenges for researchers in ‘finding your tribe’ within institutions. Digital footprints research is often highly multidisciplinary, and we researchers can often struggle to fit into a specific research group or department. The Digital Footprints conference is a platform for building these much-needed networks and working groups across institutions, disciplines and sectors.

Future of Digital Footprint Data

Looking to the future, several key themes emerged around digital footprints data for public good. First, building trust, both with public and data users is essential. Participant input is key both for building trust, and for better impact. However, this takes considerable time and investment, and needs to be considered in funding applications. More work is also needed to validate data.

Second, we must build capacity and reduce access barriers. We should look to develop standardised protocols and data sharing agreements, train up new researchers, and invest in infrastructure such as trusted research environments and secure sandboxes, and data donation platforms.

Finally, we need to build networks to share learnings. This includes working with industry and the third sector, who can provide very valuable insight into the context of their data and help shape research questions that can have real-world impact. To that end and to continue the momentum of the conference, we are excited to announce the launch of the newly formed International Society for Study of Digital Footprints. All previous conference attendees (2023-2025) will become founding members, unless they opt-out, and we look forward to building this global community together. Further details will be made available at www.issdf.net.  We are also pleased to announce that the next conference will take place on 19 - 21 May 2026 in Leeds, UK.

Dr Emma Wilkins, Dr Alice Kininmonth, Dr Anya Skatova and Prof Michelle Morris, on behalf of the organising committee