Smart City Connectivity within the Arc
What transforms a city into a smart one? At the heart of a smart city is the ability to improve citizens' lives and drive sustainability through the use of technology.
Cities must respond to their citizens’ needs, and a citizen-centric, privacy-first mindset and design is the fundamental component; this creates an ecosystem that gives the benefits of mass data without the costs to privacy.
Key to this is an adaptable and responsive urban infrastructure, sustainable development and environmental initiatives, advanced telecommunications and cloud networks, and, crucially in our case, a highly interconnected, effective and functioning transport and travel network. It’s a variety of complementary components that can help make cities more efficient and socially and economically inclusive.
For this to function, a huge range of technology needs to work in tandem to communicate problems and solutions and gather wide-ranging data to both facilitate and improve efficiency and sustainability. As is the case with Vivacity Labs, developing a strong relationship and collaboration between public and private sectors is crucial for smart cities to fully thrive.
Bringing smart cities to life within the Oxford-Cambridge Arc
If the Oxford-Cambridge Arc is going to be a regional superpower of innovation and a standard-bearer of social advancement, adhering to these principles will be fundamental to its success. The Arc represents the opportunity for a variety of educational institutions, public authorities and tech companies to collaborate and implement smart city technologies through testbeds, trials and, subsequently, real-world applications.
There are current plans to build comprehensive developments, from houses to rail transport links, in order to establish this hub of innovation and drive economic development.
However, to ensure both sustainability and a citizen-first approach, it’s important to re-evaluate how we harness and adopt the right smart city technologies in a way that minimises disruption. In many cases, existing infrastructure can be turned smart without the need to construct – sometimes quite controversial – new infrastructure.
The evolution of the smart city, with regards to travel specifically, revolves around three key areas: better data about roads, real-time control systems for existing infrastructure, and the future intersection of vehicle and fleet technologies with infrastructure. And this is what Vivacity Labs is working with cities to achieve, creating a future urban infrastructure today.
Vivacity’s sensors use artificial intelligence and machine learning to capture accurate, detailed and anonymous traffic counts of different travel modes across a selected ‘count line’, in real-time and 24/7. These counts can show the interactions between pedestrians, cyclists and cars, for example, and provide insights on factors such as number, pathways, speed and median journey times. The data is completely anonymised and presents no privacy or personal data risk. Connected by the IoT and the cloud, this data can be downloaded by authorities on dashboards and used to help manage and adapt existing schemes, plan and implement new ones, and even remove ones that aren’t working. It opens up a data-driven strategic planning of cities.
But data isn’t enough to fulfil sustainable objectives and unlock ways of reusing existing infrastructure. With congestion only set to increase and more travel modes to be using our roads, technology that can improve traffic flow is pivotal. Working with partners such as TfGM and Weaver Labs, Vivacity has installed AI-powered Smart Junctions that are able to respond in real-time to road conditions and adapt signals accordingly. They can be set up flexibly with other tech to prioritise sustainable travel, air quality in off-peak periods or reduce congestion at peak hours, for example, depending on what that specific area needs. Reducing journey times is a massive smart city prerogative, and real-world applications of our Smart Junctions have shown that they can reduce them by up to 23%. This not only improves congestion and promotes sustainable travel, but, as a result, reduces emissions.
Vivacity Labs has also been working with Ford to explore the evolution of connected vehicles, and is combining vehicle and sensor data to create tools such as accident heat maps to pre-empt incidents. Current trials of Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), and how they can work with street furniture and connected technologies, will become increasingly important to realising the smart city concept in the years to come. Data flow between the two can lead to coordination between vehicles and traffic lights and optimisation based on routes, not just presence.
The opportunities and in making our cities smarter
Policy and funding are of course both opportunities and barriers to further smart infrastructure. The two need to be aligned and funnelled into the smart city fundamentals and initiatives to progress change and make our cities smarter.
Public consultation is a highly important process in making sure schemes are designed and implemented for the benefit of those it will be used by. Even if a project is designed well and benefits the community, skipping such processes can stoke fire against such schemes and lead to their removal. That’s why obtaining data is so important to settling any debates that may arise and providing an objective truth.
Another important issue is counteracting misunderstandings people may have around AI and misconceptions about data privacy. Decision makers can actively promote privacy-by-design principles and explore ways in showcasing its benefits.
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