Notes from the Meetup #5: Networks on Networks...
On Monday the 3rd July, we once again gathered at Arup’s cafe and presentation area at the top of 3 St Paul’s Place, to meet, chat and hear about developments in the local smart city ‘scene’. Thanks everyone for coming, once again it was a sell out and the event keeps getting bigger and better thanks to you. The next event will likely be on Monday the 11th September - sign up to the mailing list and/or watch social media to find out when it’s confirmed.
Below are are the highlights and videos from our excellent speakers. And as always, the videos, presentations and other supporting documents are available in Trello, where you can also comment in detail on the topics.
Andy Curtis from Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network
Smart City Funding Opportunities
Andy Curtis is Knowledge Transfer Manager for the Digital Economy at the government’s Knowledge Transfer Network. The KTN is the government agency responsible for helping to connect people together in order to create new projects, products, services and businesses. Andy’s talk covered the many ways in which funding support could available for smart city-related projects. Note that some of them are grant funding (i.e. 100%) which others are competition funding (so usually provide between 40% and 70% of the necessary funding, leaving the applicant or consortium to find the rest). Also note that it is not the case that UK projects are ineligible for European funding, or will be looked on unfavourably - UK applications are being treated as ‘business as usual’ despite Brexit.
Here are the potential funding sources Andy mentioned in his talk:
Science and Technology Facility Council
- looking especially for ideas that could disrupt industry.Grant Finder
- The KTN has a license for this, contact Andy if you’d like access!European Horizon2020
- Generally competition funding for large-scale pan-european projects.Innovate UK
- run regular rounds of sector-specific funding, but also periodically have ‘open’ rounds for a broader range of ideas. The current open call is at this short link: http://bit.ly/OpenInno3
Major calls for potential smart city projects that are coming up from Innovate UK are:
Emerging and Enabling Technologies Round 3 (October 2017)
Energy Catalyst Round 5 (December 2017)
Infrastructure Systems Round 3 (January 2018)
Open Programme Competition (Spring 2018)
Also, keep an eye out for Innovate UK briefings - e.g. the Infrastructure Systems competition briefings are going on now. You can find webcast recordings on the Innovate website.
Andy also briefly covered International competitions as well, e.g. the UK-Malaysia Urban Innovation Challenge which closes on the 6th September.
There are also signposting services such as the European Enterprise Network and the KTN itself which also runs frequent events up and down the country where entrepreneurs and consortia can get advice and guidance.
Andy also hosts an open source list of incubators, accelerators and investors that are out there, which you can access here: http://bit.ly/ktnrefer
And finally, there’s the Future Cities Catapult, of course. The Catapults are the boundary between emerging thought and practice in industry, and they are tasked with earning their way, which means they actively bid for contracts and frequently bring in 3rd party companies to work with them to fulfil them. They are currently looking for 3rd party partners, particularly in the IoT space.
Looking ahead, there is also the UK’s Industrial Strategy, which is currently being consulted on, and as I mentioned back in February I think it was, there is a decent chance that one of the themes will be “Integrated and Sustainable Cities”, so we should keep an eye out for that.
Martin Mayfield from The University of Sheffield
Urban Flows Observatory (UflO)
Martin presented the slides that we ran through without him at the last meetup, but this time we got to hear it from the horse’s mouth :)
Check out the video to understand exactly what the Project is about, who’s behind it and the technology they are using to implement it, but the important things to take away are the following:
At it’s core, the project aims to measure the energy metabolism of the city - energy flows in and out, material properties, radiation, etc.
It’s a three-year project with a capital budget only - i.e. it has money for equipment, but not for people or projects beyond the core mission. However, there are opportunities to use the infrastructure to do some other related things if partners can fund it.
They are going to install a research-grade sensor network in the city. These could act as a reference network to compare and evaluate other (cheaper) sensors - i.e. it can act as a test bed for comparative equipment studies.
On top of this they are looking to add a layer of high-quality weather stations, and would like to site these in local primary schools.
They also want to run annual open competitions over the life of the project, that will provide kit for sensor projects to the tune of £50k-£100k for good ideas and applications - things that use the observatory’s infrastructure to provide ‘multipliers’ to the project. These competitions will be run by a steering group.
There’s also a fixed camera element to the network, and energy monitoring which is probably the least worked out component at this stage.
They are looking at building sensor platforms into ground vehicles, drones and other aerial vehicles to map the built environment and material properties of the city (or the portion on the city under study at least).
And finally, there is of course a significant data storage and analytics platform which is buying built out as well, with industry partners.
The big things for the smart city community in Sheffield are the competitions, and getting involved in figuring out how the infrastructure could become sustainable beyond the lifetime of the observatory project, otherwise it will become a teaching tool for the University of Sheffield, and cease delivering value back to the city at large.
There will likely be workshops and engagements on both of these things, and no doubt updates at future SmartSheffield meetups - we’ll keep everyone posted on these.
Pennie Raven
The Heart of Sharrow Development
Pennie, along with her business partner Jonny Douglas, presented on their mission to convert the old Victorian mansion house and grounds at Mount Pleasant, which is sandwiched between one of the most affluent parts of the city, and one of the most deprived.
They are proposing to convert the property into an an integrated complex for living, learning, innovating and producing, and holding it all under a community trust with a remit to ensure the complex delivers its foundational values to the local community for a minimum of 250 years.
It’s a radical, imaginative, future-oriented and extremely smart piece of urban design, and could really be a globally significant and pioneering project right in the city of Sheffield. Pennie and Jonny are looking for technically savvy and connected people to join their board and provide advice and guidance, should they manage to gain approval to proceed later this month, and then raise the £17m necessary for the first phase of development.
Several SmartSheffield regulars have said they would be happy to join the effort, and if you are also interested, please let me know and I’ll put you in touch with them.
Meanwhile, do watch Pennie’s presentation, it’s really extremely exciting!
Malcolm Snook from GoIntellect Electronics
Adding audio to any flat surface
Malcolm is sales manager at Intelect, who develop technology that converts flat panels (or pretty much all kinds of materials) into high-performance speakers. These systems are most often built into ceilings, but as they can essentially convert any flat surface into a speaker, there are lots of unexplored applications, and surely some in the smart city domain.
For example, one bespoke system Intelect developed was for a Formula One team that wanted its mechanics to be able to listen to music while they set up and dismantled their garages on race weekends, but didn’t want the additional clutter of a portable stereo in a busy and often cramped environment. Intelect built actuators into one of the large powered flight cases the team used to transport their equipment, along with a bluetooth receiver, thus converting the case itself a giant hi fi system that required no additional logistical effort to transport and use.
The challenge that Malcolm poses is how could this technology be used to make our cities communicate with us better?
Chris Dymond from Unfolding
SmartSheffield News
As is customary, we finished the talks with my regular update of recent smart-city related activity. In this edition, I briefly covered the following:
Sheffield Public Wifi
This procurement is still ongoing and there’s no announcement yet.Sheffield City Region Transport Prospectus
The Sheffield City Region just published this document, it follows on from the region’s Integrated Infrastructure Plan which was released earlier in the year, and lays out how they intend to work with Transport for the North, Government, national delivery agencies and local partners to deliver the transport improvements necessary to enable the region’s economic and spatial ambitions. There is some stuff in it about smart mobility.The Things Network Sheffield
I reported on the group’s second meeting which was held just before the SmartSheffield meetup proper. Full notes of the meeting are published on the Network’s community page, but the main concerns currently are around whether to wait for TTN’s own gateways to be released, or whether we should build our own using 3rd party kit sooner, and what the precise implications are of trying to connect gateways via corporate networks and what the alternatives are.
Also, there is going to be a northern Things Network gathering at the Wuthering Bytes festival at Hebden Bridge on Monday the 3rd September, as well as a sensor build workshop on the Sunday. Check these things out here!Sheffield Meta-Meetup
I also mentioned that Sheffield Digital and Google were collaborating to host the city’s first meta-meetup - a meetup for tech meetup organisers. This has now taken place and was very well attended. So far we’ve identified over 60 individual events and event series and we’ll be doing more to integrate and promote them all and the communities they represent. This provides a great way of accessing technical expertise, and there are definitely opportunities for some cross-fertilisation between events.Sheffield Communicators Network
I drew attention to another network in Sheffield, which is a regular monthly meeting of people who run the city’s major social media accounts, at which they support each others’ good practice, inform each other of upcoming campaigns and events, share assets and collaborate on promoting them. It’s been running for about 6 months (participants now refer to it as “Twitter Club”!) and the organisations involved report that they have seen a significant uplift in attendance and reach. It also means that the city is now able to speak with a much more coherent voice about things and make more noise - things that we should bear in mind as and when our projects need to avail themselves!MoveMore
June was MoveMore Month again, and it looks like initiative was a roaring success - I believe MoveMore is the largest city-wide project to get citizens to be more active and healthy and it’s something we should support. There should be a lot of data available from the thousands of movement app installs the project generated! SmartSheffielders interested in this should get in contact with the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre - let me know and I’ll make an intro!Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre
…and speaking of which, plans for the new AWRC building out at the Olympic Legacy Park have just been submitted. And as well as being an amazing facility for sports science and ‘active lifestyle’ research, they are also looking to create a comprehensive sensor network around the park and there are definitely opportunities for smart city projects around that. Again, let me know if you’re interested and I’ll put you in touch. Very usefully, Prof Steve Haake who heads the centre runs regular informal breakfast meetings to expand their network and meet people who could become partners.City Standards Institute: PAS 184 Smart Cities – Developing project proposals for delivering smart city solutions
Finally, just a heads up that the CSI have just published a briefing document detailing at length how to go about developing proposals for smart city projects. It is well worth a read, and I wonder if we shouldn’t run a dedicated workshop to explain it all in the near future..?
As always, please let me know if you spot anything we should cover in SmartSheffield News! I know there are more things going on in this city that are useful and relevant for us to know about!
Actually, two very quick extra things to mention:
Firstly, the annual Digital Leaders awards were held a few weeks ago, and the award for overall UK Digital Leader of the Year want to Helen Milner OBE of Sheffield-based Good Things Foundation for her, and their, excellent work in digital inclusion; added to which the UK’s Digital Charity Leader of the Year went to Sheffield Flourish for their excellent city-wide mental health platform. Massive congrats to them both, and more evidence of the range and quality of city-oriented applications of digital tech and innovation in Sheffield.
Secondly, there have been serious talks recently about bringing much of the city’s digital activity into a more formal and joined up governance arrangement, led by Mark Gannon at Sheffield City Council. There’s a lot more on this to come, but it’s worth noting that very positive developments are now afoot.
Phew, that’s it for the write up!
The July meetup was absolutely packed with ideas and inspiration, and it’s really tremendous to see so many people at the event contributing. And really great to see a lot of new faces as well!
The next event is likely to be on Monday the 11th September (the 1st Monday clashes with the Things Network gathering at Wuthering Bytes) - info about it will go out very soon and please let me know if you would like to present something!
