Hull City Council is preparing to put a smart city operating system into use in an initiative claimed to be the first of its type in the UK.
The CityOS platform has been developed by locally based smart city specialist Connexin and its implementation marks the latest stage of its partnership with the city council.
It is built around the Cisco Kinetic for Cities platform which normalises and aggregates data from a range of IoT sensor types into a certified set of urban service domains such as waste, lighting and parking.
The platform will pull together information that currently sits within separate council computer systems to enable city-wide management of public assets in real time.
This should enable council employees to integrate and manage information from a range of council services, sensors and systems using a single intelligent dashboard.
Connexin highlighted the potential for it to integrate data from internet of things (IoT) technology, taking in services such as smart lighting, parking, traffic, waste management and Wi-Fi deployments. It said this will enable Hull to become a ‘programmable city’ and enable it to make more from AI and machine learning.
New opportunity
Deputy Leader of Hull City Council Daren Hale said: “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.”
He added: “Residents will receive better information to make choices about transport, traffic and parking. But this will be just the beginning of what is possible.
“As the project develops, it will create a demand for a 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.”
Hull has been among the UK’s leaders in pushing the smart city agenda and shared a number of projects with Connexin. In April plans were revealed to install a network of air quality sensors around the city, and in July 2018 the council announced the installation of a long range wide area network to support the use of IoT technology.
Image: Old Town, Hull, by Robert Haywood, CC BY-SA 2.0
