Cambridgeshire County Council Hosted Transport Data

The Smart Cambridge programme

Cambridge needs to grow and there are currently plans for over 33,000 houses to be built over the next fifteen years which will see an additional 50,000 people move into Cambridge and the surrounding area. This growth presents an unprecedented challenge for Cambridge and there is an immediate need to address the pressures this will put on mobility, the Environment, Health and Social Care and the potential impacts on quality of life for residents.
Digital technology now underpins almost all aspects of modern living in every sphere across work, travel, leisure and health; and increasingly it impacts on the economic strength, sustainability and quality of life of all parts of the UK and beyond. Emerging “smart cities” technology which is set to have an even greater economic impact in future, builds on this to utilise digital connectivity, sensors and data in innovative ways. This innovation will support: efficient resource management; environmental management, traffic congestion and other city management challenges and help to engage more directly with citizens.
On the 4th of Aug 2015 the Smart Cambridge programme became a workstream within the Greater Cambridge City Deal http://www.gccitydeal.co.uk/. One of the first investments the City Deal has agreed to make to support the Smart Cambridge programme is the development of a ‘City Management Platform’ that will deliver two use cases;

• a journey planning tool which will have the ability to go over and above the current market leaders (Google, Apple etc.)
• a baselining of the current data available within the city and the creation of visualisation and analytics tools to enable policy makers to be able to better use this data.

For further information please see - http://www.connectingcambridgeshire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Smart-Cambridge-guide.pdf

City Management Platform

The purpose of the ‘City Management Platform’ is to create an initial IT infrastructure that can evolve and develop to support Greater Cambridge as a Smart City and to facilitate the development of applications which will support the work of the City Deal. In the first phase this will focus on becoming the key source for accurate and reliable mobility data for the Greater Cambridge area. This data will underpin the development of mobility applications by both the City Deal partnership but also 3rd party application developers.

A schematic for the platform is included at Appendix A. In summary the components include:

• A data network, specifically designed to support Internet of Things technology such as traffic, cycle and air quality sensors.
• A data hub (or hubs), a software platform which will collate, combine and process a range of data sets to provide additional insights/information/visualisation as well as application development for both the City Deal Partners and 3rd parties
• An array of sensors which will enable automated detection and monitoring of a range of measures including air quality, traffic, cycle and pedestrian movements around the city.

The data hub element will be delivered in stages. The first stage will be the development of data infrastructure to support mobility projects and will specialise in transport data. The second phase will look to develop a more generalised hub which will be able to handle a wide variety of data including, air quality, service delivery (waste, environmental etc.) energy flooding etc.

More Information

Page 93-98 City Deal Exec Board report March 2016 - http://scambs.moderngov.co.uk/documents/g6645/Public%20reports%20pack%20Thursday%2003-Mar-2016%2014.00%20Greater%20Cambridge%20City%20Deal%20Executive%20Board.pdf?T=10