London is pressing ahead with initiatives to enable the city to become empowered and improved by collecting, sharing and using better data. 

Nathan Pierce, head of Smart London Team and Sharing Cities Programme Director at the GLA, introduced a special session on Improving Public Spaces through Data Sharing last week by talking through an Internet of Things framework his team has developed between London, Milan and Lisbon to get the best out of data. This focuses on 10 types of smart and digital technology, with Greenwich being the focus of London’s end, using sensors and tech that can be adapted to infrastructure on the street and which relays information to city managers in order to improve services.

Applying technical or digital solutions should be done ethically and as transparently as possible, with clear lines of responsibility, Pierce added, to protect people’s privacy, with the right, compatible, stable and consistent interoperable technology. Covid has not particularly thrown up anything new, but has ‘massively’ accelerated some of the work that was already being implemented in London, said Pierce. ‘So the need for sensors on the streets is now under much more of microscope than it was before the pandemic’.

Other speakers at the London & Partners-supported event included Arup senior planner Sarah Hayes on the firm’s ongoing ‘exciting’ work with the London Data Commission and specifically the concept of digital neighbourhoods and the need for it be ‘outcomes driven’. Hayes cited work in Australia on digital twins and expanding building information modelling systems to a wider precinct or neighbourhood. Bosch product manager for air quality solutions Lionel Vancon, moreover, spoke about its work to collect data in Brixton with key partners to see how traffic improvements affect air quality. ‘Data business is not only improving air quality but is also a win-win situation with different stakeholders’, he said. And, during a panel discussion, Microsoft UK business development director Daniel H. Batts took the webinar audience through the company’s work with the London Data Commission and conversations with City Hall and London boroughs. 

Webinar chair Simon Allison, senior inward investment manager at London & Partners said the session had highlighted issues including accelerating technologies,  the need to build trust, collaboration, the importance of community and the role of the citizen, the future of data and how we need outcomes-driven solutions.