Things Connected is looking to develop IoT devices to solve city challenges ranging from flooding, to air pollution, to helping the NHS make better use of its buildings
Six SME’s from across the UK have been awarded a share of £50,000 funding to help tackle problems such as noise pollution, making cycling safer and helping the NHS utilise under-used space, via IoT devices.
Things Connected is ran by the Future Cities Catapult, a UK Government-supported centre of excellence in urban innovation, which will fund the SMEs to develop and demonstrate connected devices in London using its Things Connected Low-Power LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network).
With the UK’s IoT marketplace current worth £13.3bn, and expected to rise to £20bn by 2018, the Things Connected network provides huge opportunities for entrepreneurs and developers to test and trial new ideas that can be rolled out on commercial networks.
The winning proposals are:
– Beringar (Edinburgh) are testing light and environmental sensors to identify unallocated and under-utilised space within the health estate. This has the potential to increase patient convenience, save money and ultimately help the NHS improve the quality of care.
– BuggyAir (London) will develop their prototype to provide real-time information on pedestrian and cyclist’s exposure to pollutant, using route visualisation and comparison.
– Fosters and Partners (London) are developing a system to monitor noise pollution in capital, allowing ordinary people to collect and visualise local information about the sound around them. This will enable Londoners to mitigate the effects of noise and give people a basis for informing policy to shape their community.
– Joyride Technologies (London) in partnership with the London Cycling Campaign, will be using sensors to collect information about how families commute around the city as cyclists. This can then be considered in the infrastructure planning process.
– KloudKeeper (Exeter) will demonstrate their smart rainwater capture, reuse and release hardware, minimising flooding and reducing water demand.
– Nymbly (Cambridge) are testing their air quality management app that has a direct impact on health in the workplace. Their newly designed advanced sensors offers data accuracy to room level and through data modeling, informs building owners to take action by improving the ventilation system, humidity control or filtering.
Future Cities Catapult CEO Peter Madden, said: “We’re pleased to announce the winners of the ‘Things Connected’ Open Call, and look forward to seeing how they use IoT devices to solve city challenges ranging from flooding, to air pollution, to helping the NHS make better use of its buildings.
“Here at Future Cities Catapult we actively engage high-growth businesses to drive innovation for urban development. By supporting UK SME’s with funding, we further position the UK as a world leader in connectivity.”
Launched in September 2016, Things Connected is a collaboration between Future Cities Catapult, Digital Catapult, BT, Everynet, Beecham Research, AllThingsTalk, BRE, Imperial College London, King’s College London, UCL and Queen Mary University of London.
The network is not built for commercial purposes, but rather, for testing and trialing new ideas, where once developed innovations can be launched on one of the commercial networks covering the UK today.
