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Developments should deliver aggregated benefits to wider community.

With the UK government defining data centres as critical infrastructure and fast tracking their planning permission, the data centre sector is predicted to grow rapidly in the coming decades. We spoke to several key players from the industry as well as sociology experts to gain insight into the ways that data centres can be more socially integrated into their local communities.

The resulting report, ‘DC Society: Putting Community into Data Centre Thinking’, finds that some recent data centre infrastructure developments have been creating jobs and attracting business investment, especially low-latency applications such as e-sports, economic growth and innovation.

Read the report – DC Society: Putting Community into Data Centre Thinking

“Data centres do not need to be pitted in competition with local people for access to resources, they can enable other opportunities for people instead. The placement of data centres, and defining their relationship with the community around them, has the potential to improve health outcomes, create jobs, support research centres and draw in high value data industries.”

Derek Main, Technical Director for Mission Critical and Data Centres, Hoare Lea

Our report also highlights how working in dialogue with a local community new data centre developments can draw in other benefits. These include heat re-use and power sharing for housing, community buildings and vertical farms, discounted data access for institutions such as universities and the NHS and galvanising economic renewal by acting as a digital port, crowding in green energy and digital infrastructure.

Our report recommends a new set of principles for engagement should be developed for local authorities to use that facilitate community-led master planning. It also recommends that local government should be equipped with the right knowledge so that they know what to ask for to meet each region’s unique needs.

“Alongside the technology, security, and energy-efficiency, data centres would benefit greatly by being designed with societal insight. If data centre developers and owners opt into a social contract with their neighbours all parties can benefit.”

Dr Paul Hanna, Head of Societal Impacts, Hoare Lea