Who is the survey aimed at?
This survey is aimed at individuals working in local government or place-based organisations who are responsible for the design, procurement and management of the UK’s connected places.
Such organisations may include:
- Regional and local authorities in the UK
- Transport authorities and operators (for example: rail, aviation, ports/maritime, roads and bus operators)
- Health and social care providers
- Smart utilities providers (for example: waste, water)
- Property and building management companies
- Universities / smart campuses
- Sports and cultural venues
A range of individuals may be involved in the design, build and operation of connected places within your organisation. You may therefore submit a single (coordinated) response on behalf of your organisation; or a response on behalf of your specific department/function, as appropriate. The survey asks you which of these is the case.
The following is intended to be a non-exhaustive illustration of the types of individuals that we would welcome responses from:
- Connected places (or smart city) or innovation project and strategy leads and officials
- Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs)
- Head of IT departments / relevant IT personnel
- Cyber security architects and engineers
- Commercial and procurement leads and officials
- All other personnel involved in running the day-to-day operations of connected places infrastructure.
Examples of connected place activities in the private sector:
Universities/Smart Campus – examples:
- Students can be digitally connected to educational materials, each other, and their teachers
- Campus environmental monitoring
- Building efficiency monitoring
- Student experience optimisation
- optimising space utilisation
Smart Utilities – examples:
- Smart meters – allow individuals and the national grid to monitor power consumption
- Incentives such as price reductions at of peak times can be used to smooth supplies. Can be used to smooth demand for energy
- Next generation energy transmission and distribution networks can automatically monitor energy flows and adjust to changes in supply and demand accordingly
- include leakage and pollution detection and predictive maintenance planning. Cost savings and greener as reduces waste
Property management/urban planning – examples:
- Use of just in time waste collection, using sensors fitted in the waste bins. Avoids congestion, energy efficient
- A move to circular waste management, more recycling, identifying waste for energy. Big benefit in the move to net zero
- Sensors measuring occupancy rates can control the lighting and ventilation systems in the building
- Smart buildings can reduce power consumption when the grid tells them demand is high
Transport/Connected vehicles – examples:
- Drivers can identify free parking spaces, eases congestion in cities.
- Rolling stock tracking (rail)
- Predictive maintenance
- Mobility as a service, e.g. journey planning and accessible travel
- Bottlenecks for traffic can identified and routing applied to journeys to avoid major congestion
- Can be used to avoid accidents as interaction can between other vehicles, people, and infrastructure
Health and Social Care – examples:
- Monitoring the elderly or vulnerable with wearable or at home monitoring tech (at home/post operations)
- Automated pollutions sensors that can be tied into central computing systems
- Rooms in hospitals can be optimally heated, cooled, and air-conditioned
Sports/Culture – examples:
- Footfall data collated to smooth demand for planning and scheduling
- Scheduling of events at clean environment venues and the managing of sports tourism
- Some ticketing data
- Parking or traffic monitoring sensors
