Smart City Spotlight (Bristol, UK)

In order to catalyze innovation and economic development, Bristol aims to build a platform for the development of smart city applications that will promote innovation and deliver a better quality of life for it's residents. It is partnering with Bristol University to promote Bristol Is Open (BIO) — an effort to deploy and trial a citywide smart city network.

In order to achieve this, BIO is encouraging local entrepreneurs to connect new sensors and devices to a common network, and to prepare for commercialization globally. The approach: » MULTI-APPLICATION IPv6-BASED NETWORK – leveraging the same Silver Spring network canopy for applications such as parking meters, traffic light and congestion sensors, safety cameras, air quality sensors, weather sensors, public transportation sensors, remote personal healthcare monitors, and acoustic detection » ENVIRONMENTAL SENSORS – gathering and accessing data from sensors across the city can enable the development of Internet of Everything productivity services for citizens. » CATALYZING INNOVATION – enabling entrepreneurs and academic institutions to leverage sensor data and insights to prototype new smart city applications and services.

• [Efficiency Improvement - Operation]
  City departments responsible for services such as lighting, traffic or transportation are often siloed with no mechanism for cross-department collaboration. Creating a shared network infrastructure enables these groups to leverage resources to increase efficiency, reduce cost and provide better services.
• [Efficiency Improvement - Energy]
  Connecting existing city assets such as street lights, distributed sensors and other critical infrastructure can result in tremendous economic and energy benefits. Once this is achieved, the existing network can be extended to other city services as well.