How Innovate UK’s Future Cities Catapult is bringing ‘smart’ projects to life.
The Future Cities Catapult, one of seven “catapults” set up by Innovate UK to incubate new technologies, has just moved into its new HQ. The Urban Innovation Centre in London’s Clerkenwell is a space where inter-disciplinary sparks can fly, illuminating the problems cities face and helping to trial solutions in a “laboratory” setting. One of its tenants will be the Rockefeller Resilient Cities Foundation, a multi-million fund that supports “smart cities” projects.
“We’re about adding value and building collaborations,” says Stefan Webb, city project developer. “We’re building a programme that allows SMEs access to expertise, and helps to internationalise UK skills, services and products.”
But it has purposely shied away from the term “smart cities”. “We believe the technology is there to solve human problems and city problems, ie the smart doesn’t come first. And ‘smart cities’ tends to sound a bit impersonal.”
Stefan Webb: ‘collaborations’
Webb comes from a background in urban planning, an area often cited as a key beneficiary of “smart” systems: think of a “city data model” integrating transport, energy, crime and water data. However, he says this real-time data needn’t be a 3D representation. “People get a bit fixated on 3D models, when we’re still advertising planning notices on lamposts!” he says.
It’s developing projects on three themes: promoting healthy cities, resilience in urban infrastructure, and strategies to help cities adopt and finance smarter technologies.
It is currently working with Greater Manchester on the development of an Open Infrastructure Data Map, which facilitates interaction between planners, utilities and developers.
Then there’s the “Cities Unleashed” project with UCL and Microsoft, to help partially sighted people navigate cities via a special headset, linking with iBeacon sensors to communicate directions through vibrations.
And in Milton Keynes, there’s an Internet of Things and driverless car trial. “Once driverless cars come in, our relationship with transport will completely change,” says Webb.
So how should cities smarten up? “The over-arching message is that they don’t have to be leaders in innovation, it’s about collaboration,” he says.
