A pioneering project undertaken by Connexin has been credited with kicking off the age of the 'programmable city'.
The tech company has turned its hometown Hull into what it claims to be the first smart city of its kind following the deployment of an operating system that pulls together data that sits within separate council computer systems, enabling the management of the city’s public assets in real-time.
Hull City Council will leverage Connexin’s CityOS platform to integrate, view, manage and respond to information from a range of council services, sensors and systems, via a single intelligent dashboard.
Information from current and future data producing deployments, such as smart lighting, parking, traffic, waste management and Wi-Fi deployments, are to be integrated into the single pane of glass software platform.
"Our platform will enable Hull to become a 'programmable city' and move from outdated siloed service driven technologies to a central platform to improve service delivery, reduce costs and to make the most of new technologies such as IoT, AI and machine learning algorithms," stated Connexin founder and CEO Furqan Alamgir (pictured).
Connexin’s system is built around the Cisco Kinetic for Cities platform which aggregates data from a range of IoT sensor types into a certified set of urban service domains such as waste, lighting and parking.
Cisco Kinetic has been deployed in projects worldwide and brings over 70 out of the box Cisco certified integrations which Cisco maintains and updates.
Scot Gardner, Chief Executive, Cisco UK & Ireland, added: “When you start to think of a city as programmable, there is an opportunity to not only improve individual services with technology, but use combined data insight from those services to create a holistic, actionable view for local authorities.”
One of the services which is to be integrated into the Smart City Platform is a recent deployment of waste management sensors.
The new software also opens the door for a number of innovation projects and developments. Much of the information brought together will become available, on an open platform, for the public to use to drive new ideas and solutions to directly benefit the local economy.
With open APIs, local and global independent software vendors and city application developers can plug into the management infrastructure and provide public service capabilities.
Councillor Daren Hale, Deputy Leader of Hull City Council, added: “Developing Hull as a Smart City will give us the opportunity to work with public and private sector partners to deliver real benefits to communities, businesses and visitors to Hull.
The project will involve innovative technological solutions to enhance data sharing and decision making, which will help us to deliver more effective services, including everything from traffic management to health and social care.
"As the project develops, it will create demand for new digitally skilled workforce in the city, so we will need to invest in skills and training for younger generations so they are prepared for the new types of jobs that will be created in the digital sector.”