Innovating Infrastructure: A new platform for studying dynamic regional economies

这项研究的重点是地理上界定的经济区域，以了解为什么一些地区蓬勃发展，而另一些地区停滞不前。此类研究的关键障碍是缺乏个人、公司和机构层面的详细时间序列数据。在过去的6年里，研究人员从北卡罗来纳州研究三角园区地区的4200多家科技公司获得了此类数据，现在他们能够检查经济实体之间的空间和时间关系，并揭示区域经济结果的驱动因素。研究人员开发了一个关系数据库和工具集，可以对这些数据进行组织、管理和搜索。他们现在正在用网络基础设施扩展这一解决方案，该网络基础设施管理各种类型的经济数据，帮助整合较新的数据，并为地理时空数据的分析和可视化提供新的方法，同时解决隐私和安全问题。通过这一新的网络基础设施，一个跨学科的学者社区能够获得关于区域经济的数据和工具。同样，政策制定者和经济从业者可以使用报告工具，提供比目前更详细的信息。展望未来，发达的网络基础设施提供了一个框架和必要的解决方案，为其他区域研究系统提供动力，从而进一步扩展我们对区域经济的知识。

This research focuses on geographically-defined economic regions in order to understand why some regions thrive while others stagnate. The key barrier to such research is the lack of detailed, time-series data at the individual, firm, and institutional level. Over the past 6 years, the researchers have acquired such data on over 4200 technology firms in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina and they are now able to examine the spatial and temporal relationships between economic entities and uncover the drivers of regional economic outcomes.The researchers have developed a relational database and tool sets that enables the organization, curation, and search of this data. They are now extending this solution with a cyberinfrastructure that manages diverse types of economic data, aids in integration of newer data, and powers new approaches for analysis and visualization of geo-spatial-temporal data, while addressing privacy and security concerns. Through this new cyberinfrastructure, a community of interdisciplinary scholars are able to have access to the data and tools on regional economics. Likewise, policy makers and economic practitioners could have access to reporting tools that provide greater detail than is available today. Going forward, the developed cyberinfrastructure provides both a framework and needed solutions to power other regional research systems and thus further extend our knowledge of regional economics.