In the second of a two-part special feature on smart cities, Circular online’s digital editor, Darrel Moore, looks at smart city developments in across the UK.
According to research commissioned by Huawei UK and conducted by Navigant Consulting in 2016, London and Bristol are Britain’s leading smart cities. The Huawei UK Smart Cities Index measured how well the nation’s urban centres are doing at using digital technology to improve everything from transport infrastructure to refuse collections. London and Bristol were ranked as “leaders” at the top of the table; next came the “contenders”, with Birmingham in third place, followed by Glasgow, Manchester, and Milton Keynes.
London’s successes include its congestion charge scheme and other transport innovations and the London Datastore. Bristol’s achievements include the “Bristol Is Open” project, which has brought together the University of Bristol, Bristol City Council and industry partners to create a city-scale network for innovation.
London’s successes include its congestion charge scheme and other transport innovations and the London Datastore. Bristol’s achievements include the “Bristol Is Open” project, which has brought together the University of Bristol, Bristol City Council and industry partners to create a city-scale network for innovation.
Other notable programmes include Birmingham’s plans to make East Birmingham a testbed for smart technology; Manchester’s new IoT City Demonstrator; Glasgow’s range of projects developed as part of Future Cities Demonstrator programme; and Milton Keynes’ MK:Smart collaboration on Internet of Things (IoT) projects with the Open University and other partners. Gordon Luo, Huawei UK CEO, says the UK is contributing to the smart city pool and that it is one of the leading countries in Europe in this field.
“From Bristol’s open data strategy to Milton Keynes’s pilots of autonomous vehicles, there are excellent smart cities projects all over the UK,” he said. “We wanted to understand how well advanced these schemes were and where lessons could be learnt between them. The Huawei UK Smart Cities Index shows that, right now, Britain is one of the most advanced countries in Europe in this field. But it’s stillearly days and there is more work to do to build more effective partnerships between city authorities and technology providers, and in making the benefits ofsmart city technology apparent to a greater number of citizens.”1
Eric Woods, research director at Navigant Research, said: “The drive for smarter cities is putting a spotlight on all aspects of city operations – including waste management and broader sustainability and resource management issues. The innovations in sensor technologies and data analytics, for example, can help optimise waste collection and so reduce expenditure on collection vehicles while improving services. Also important is the holistic view on the city, which reinforces interest in waste reduction and is now strengthening interest in the circular economy.”
London
London’s population is expected to grow to nearly 10m by 2030, placing pressures on resources, infrastructure and communities. The promotion of a smart city strategy across London was given a boost in 2013 with the establishment of the Smart London Board and the publication of the Smart London Plan.
The Smart London Innovation Networks (SLINs) were created to support the development of smart city innovation that addresses resource pressures whilst creating new economic and research opportunities.
There are currently two SLINs; the Smart London Districts Network, launched in 2014, which brings together public and private development organisations delivering London’s largest and most ambitious development districts; and the Smart London Infrastructure Network, which is comprised of organisations delivering London’s infrastructure services, primarily the utilities responsible for water, energy, telecommunications and waste management.
Technologies already commonly used in the city include the London Datastore, an open data platform that receives over 25,000 visits a month and over 450 transport apps alone have been created from it; innovations in transport, including the use of number plate recognition for the congestion charge, Wi-Fi on the Tube and the intelligent road network management systems that trialled during the Olympics. Of course there is also the use of contactless Oyster, credit and debit cards and it’s using new technologies to reuse waste heat from underground shafts and sub-stations. But there is more happening in London than you might have guessed2.
Eric says we are seeing a strong momentum in the UK as more cities outline their ambitions to be smarter and/or more sustainable cities. “In a sense, all cites are becoming smarter because of the advances in base technology (such as smartphones, wireless connectivity etc) – the question is whether they can harness those development to improve services and increase efficiency as well as to be attractive to new investment, develop new employment opportunities etc,” he said.
Smart Solutions
Smart city solutions and investment in the capital cover a range of issues, from air pollution to navigation and crowd management, to using data to establish new service designs.
The Intel Collaborative Research Institute “Living Labs” are working with the London Borough of Enfield to monitor air quality through the use of low-cost sensors and networks. Sensors collect real-time information about air quality at badly-polluted junctions. The council then uses the information to develop new programmes to improve air quality across the borough.
The Smart London Innovation Network is also bringing forward a range of trials to “smart park” Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The trials will test new ways that technology can be used to manage an urban district. The challenges include smarter crowd management, environmental sensing, and community building.
Combining data generated by city services and utilities is being looked at by Digital City Exchange, supported by the Data Science Institute. Data will be analysed from travel disruption alerts to data-stores and live data from smart metres.
The billions of gigabytes of data generated by sensors in cities are growing exponentially as different datasets become linked. The Institute is building a platform called “Concinnity” for sensor data to be taken all the way from collection through to analysis and finally to new city services. This combines a datastore for sensor data with a way to mesh data automatically (for example, water and waste data for the same home) – enabling scientists to collaborate securely on the web and experiment with new service design.
Helping to accelerate the development of smart city technology in London is a project called Cognicity by ENTIQ for the Canary Wharf Group. Participants in the 2015 “Cognicity Challenge” developed or customised smart city solutions across six categories, from resource management to integrated transport. Each stream’s winner received a £50,000 cash prize and an opportunity to pilot their solution as part of the ongoing development of Canary Wharf in London.
These companies aim to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs, while also personalising and improving the quality of life of people living and working in the city.
Bristol
Whn it comes to Smart City’s technologies, strategies and visions, Bristol shows unique characteristics. Whilst London, as a global megacity, operates on a different scale than any other UK centre and benefits from its global financial centrality, Bristol’s competitive advantage lies in its vision and its city-networking project, Bristol Is Open.
Asking Eric what the most adventurous/exciting concept for a smart city he’d come across, interestingly, he cited Bristol Is Open. “[It’s] an ambitious network and data platform for city innovation,” he said. “But I could also cite Milton Keynes, MK:Smart project, the new CityVerve project in Manchester and city demonstration project in Greenwich will also be interesting to watch.”
In terms of strategy, the research by Navigant Consultancy found out that Bristol provides a framework to connect successful innovations with priority issues for the city and its communities. Not only this, other Bristol strengths are its deep understanding of the open data revolution, its energy-management innovations and community engagement. In this respect, Navigant Consulting highlighted the importance of playable city ideas, an important reminder of the need for smart cities to be attractive, engaging and efficient. Crucial to Bristol’s leadership status is Bristol Is Open, depicted by Navigant Consulting as a city networking project with the potential to emerge as a world-leading large-scale environment for the testing of technological, social and urban innovation.
A canopy of connectivity across most of the city has been created from access points mounted on 1,500 street lampposts. It uses a range of self-regulating advanced wireless technologies for extending connectivity, connected to the core fibre ring at nine points. The Mesh will enable IoT devices to be implemented at scale offering test facilities to network operators, application developers and manufacturers of IoT devices.
Bristol Is Open is a joint venture between the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council. It is funded by the local, national and European governments, with academic research funding, and by the private sector. It is delivering research and development initiatives that contribute to the development of a smart city and the “Internet of Things”.
“The leading cities have strong leadership and commitment to smart city ideas” Eric says. “This includes identifying and trying to address infrastructure weaknesses that are holding the city back in some areas (whether that’s broadband access or transportation links for example). Clearly tough, financial conditions make it harder to find funds for capital projects. But cities are trying to identify and find investment in critical areas – they are also looking to maximise benefits of major programmes that are being funded, such as HS2.”
Smart Solutions
Bristol Is Open provides City Experimentation as a Service to companies that develop networking, connectivity, IoT, rich-media (an Internet advertising term for a web page ad that uses advanced technology such as streaming video) and other smart-city solutions. A “software-defined” urban digital test-bed is being deployed across Bristol, and extended across the West of England, over the next couple of years. The test-bed is coming live in phases between Autumn 2015 and Autumn 2016. The digital infrastructure can be used by companies and developers to build and test a wide range of applications and smart city services ranging from waste management, congestion management, new forms of e-democracy (incorporates 21st-century information and communications technology to promote democracy), energy supply management and driverless cars.
Bristol also launched Bristol Is Open’s Internet of Things (IoT) Mesh network across the city. A canopy of connectivity across most of the city has been created from access points mounted on 1,500 street lampposts. It uses a range of self-regulating advanced wireless technologies for extending connectivity, connected to the core fibre ring at nine points. The Mesh will enable IoT devices to be implemented at scale offering test facilities to network operators, application developers and manufacturers of IoT devices.
The Wireless Mile project follows Bristol’s famous harbour-side, where a range of wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, LTE and 5G technologies use advanced wireless technology to connect to the core fibre network. The Wireless Mile will enable public cellular network operators and application developers to test 5G technologies and public-facing services (pending Ofcom approval).
Birmingham
In 2013, Birmingham City Council published its Smart City Vision statement and then its Smart City Roadmap the following year. The Birmingham Smart City Commission developed the Roadmap, which lays out over 35 actions that aim to influence the city’s approach to creating a sustainable and better future for its citizens. It aims to do this by responding to challenges such as unemployment, the skills gap, health inequalities, effective mobility and carbon reduction targets in three themed areas: technology and place, people and economy.
Digital Birmingham has been at the forefront of leading the city’s digital and smart cities development.
Smart Solutions
The Birmingham Civic Dashboard, funded by National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), is one of the first UK projects combining public data and civil engagement. The application, developed by Digital Birmingham and Mudlark, takes live data from the city’s Customer First contact database and shows trends on an online map, allowing the council and residents to identify “hotspot” areas where there are common or recurring issues, reported to the council, such as housing repairs and missed waste collections. In turn residents can comment on the trends that emerge over time, giving an on-the-ground perspective on particular issues.
A smart city demonstrator project has also been established along the Eastern Growth Corridor of the city to provide the opportunity to lever and integrate city centre investments.
Working with the Smart City Commission, Birmingham Digital is exploring how the wider deployment of smart city/future internet-based technologies and services can help drive innovation. The demonstrator will aim
to tackle local problems in a more “holistic, layered and integrated way”. It will drive greater connectedness along urban clusters – connecting assets, data, talent, location, infrastructure to combine innovative design, use of community and social spaces and services with housing and infrastructure developments.
Circular Peterborough
Various industry professionals across Peterborough and beyond took part in a practical workshop in June this year to learn more about how adopting circular economy principles can benefit both their business and the wider city. The event, which was hosted at the Allia Future Business Centre, was delivered by the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) as part of the Peterborough DNA Smart City programme.
As part of the city’s Circular Peterborough initiative – an ambition to create a circular city to help Peterborough efficiently manage the flow of its resources – the event supported businesses to take their first practical steps towards circularity.
The event began with an introduction from KTN and the Peterborough DNA project team to help delegates understand more about the circular economy approach. Delegates then participated in group activities to put the circular economy approach into practice, to challenge their usual way of doing business and explore ways to apply the principles to their own companies.
The potential of smart city technology and its wider benefits are clear. From better city planning and development; delivering government services faster and at a lower operating expense; improved productivity and service; to saving resources and manpower – smart cities solutions have the potential help address a number of social, environmental and economic issues.
Steve Bowyer, chief executive of economic development company, Opportunity Peterborough, said: “Our vision to become a Circular City will put Peterborough right at the front of smart city thinking, re-enforcing our aspiration to make Peterborough a fantastic place to live and work. However, to achieve that vision, we need collaboration on a city-wide scale, with representatives from business, schools, communities as well as city institutions.”
The potential of smart city technology and its wider benefits are clear. From better city planning and development; delivering government services faster and at a lower operating expense; improved productivity and service; to saving resources and manpower – smart cities solutions have the potential help address a number of social, environmental and economic issues.
Eric concluded: “The key challenge now is to align technical innovations with priority city issues so that real benefits can be demonstrated as the basis for robust business cases. The technology has to move from pilots and limited projects into wider deployments that benefits all citizens – for that to happen the focus has to shift from technology itself to priority outcomes for the city.”
References
1. www.huawei.com/en/news/2016/5/UKs-leading-smartcities
2. www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/business-and-economy/
science-and-technology/smart-london/smart-london-casestudies
3. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/
attachment_data/file/249423/bis-13-1217-smart-citymarket-
opportunties-uk.pdf
4. www.citihorizons.com/resources/lucy-zodion-white-paper
