Digital City Exchange

City infrastructure has evolved through many vintages of technology; its various components are not efficiently connected and configured. Utilities and services using this infrastructure often operate sub-optimally, constraining development of new value-added services. Digital technologies enhance our ability to collect appropriate data and conduct analysis at a systemic level, thereby enhancing efficiency and allowing valuable new service businesses to emerge for the first time. This enhances quality of life, making our cities more globally competitive and providing opportunities for new jobs, both within existing companies and because entirely new companies have been empowered to spring up. One simple application is the problem of managing peak demand for infrastructure, whether for energy, waste, water, or transport. Peaky demand requires the provision of expensive infrastructure, the need for which can be avoided if demand can be spread more evenly. Failure to resolve this issue leads to costly symptoms such as traffic congestion or power outages. As urban populations expand, these problems are becoming more apparent and pressing. At present, those responsible for urban services attempt to resolve each of these problems in isolation - for example, congestion charging for transport takes no account of effects thereby induced on demand peaks for energy, implied effects on the bunching of hospital services, or whether congestion in supermarkets is thereby reduced or exacerbated. When systems interact as much as this, optimization at a higher level will yield important efficiency gains - cheaper costs, additional leisure time, better quality of life - making such cities more attractive places for businesses and consumers.Developments in pervasive sensing, large-scale modelling, new analytical and optimisation techniques and web services technologies offer a new wave of opportunities to re-think an integrated urban infrastructure. New markets for digital services will grow from the ability to integrate, analyse, model, and act upon data from multiple sources. Making this happen in reality also requires progress in the understanding of business models, consumer behaviour at a systemic level, and the prototyping of service innovation to accelerate the development of financially viable new services. This proposal seeks to create understanding at each stage in this chain, and to validate the benefits thereby obtained.

The potential for impact from DCE is large because, whilst involving deep technical and business research, it is conducted close to the market and with industry partners who are committed to embedding the findings from research rapidly into practice. WP6 clearly contains knowledge transfer activities. As such it will be activated towards the end of the programme. The track record of the investigators shows the wealth of their experience in achieving impact from academia, through influencing policy and through large and small businesses.Academic impact will be achieved through normal academic channels, such as conferences, publication and workshops. The valuable skills developed by researchers work on cross-disciplinary teams will have enable impact through transfer of personnel during and after the grant. Relevant courses at Imperial College - such as the MSc in Digital Business, the MSc in Transport, the MSc in Systems Engineering and Innovation and the MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures - and across Europe through Imperial College's role in the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Community, will ensure that findings from the research programme have impact on the education of a large number of students.Economic and societal impact will be achieved by:- Engaging key stakeholders in the research, mapping technology and business solutions to industrial need - enhancing opportunity for their adoption;- Embedding an understanding of users' needs and the adoption pathways into the standards and business models created; and- Building simulation and modelling interfaces in order to engage key influencers.These will enable impact on quality of life, public services and policy and on the UK's economic competitiveness.