Author: Claire Thorne

iCity: ‘Building a Smarter London’ Breakfast Briefing

By Claire Thorne

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Hosted by the Greater London Authority (GLA)

Koen, David, Richard and I made our way to City Hall for the iCity Breakfast Briefing [agenda]…

The attendees – policy, local government, academic and private industry representatives spanning the architecture, construction, energy, health, transport, and technology sectors – were invited to hear about the European project’s recent progress, with the event promising to “combine structured presentation from leading speakers with interactive working and shared learning”.

Andrew Collinge (Assistant Director, Intelligence and Analysis, GLA) set the scene with a galvanising introduction.

Citizen-centred design for future transport #rcaktn

By Claire Thorne

Wednesday 1 May 2013 #rcaktn

Hosted by Innovation RCA, the Technology Strategy Board’s Knowledge Transfer Networks, and Open City Labs

What is citizen-centred design? And what does it mean in the context of future transport? What could, and should, future transport modes, networks and offerings look like? And how do we get ‘there’?

Whatever insights the day’s discussions promised, I turned up to the Dyson building, Battersea, sure of at least one success: The Royal College of Art had managed to bring a hugely diverse group of people [delegate list, pdf ] together under one (very stylised) roof.

Imperial-Government Digital Service joint ‘teacamp’

Thursday 7 February 2013, Queen’s Tower Rooms, Imperial College London

DCE co-host ‘teacamp’ event on Open Data and Smart Cities

On February 7th, Imperial’s Digital City Exchange, the Digital Economy Lab and Sustainable Society Network+ hosted a special, one-off teacamp.

So, what is ‘teacamp‘?

Teacamp is an established series of informal, free, discussion events hosted via the Government Digital Service (GDS, Cabinet Office).

“Teacamps are informal gatherings for digital people who work in and around government and also outside of government. They are usually two hours long including a slot for a speaker and chatting over a cup of tea, hence the name ‘teacamp’…”

What made this teacamp special?

World Intelligent Cities Summit 2012

Istanbul,13-14 September 2012

By Pantelis Koutroumpis

The first of its kind World Intelligent Cities Summit took place in Istanbul on the 13-14 September. The agenda included prominent figures from the Turkish government and local authorities together with international experts presenting best practices for the development of connected and sustainable cities. While primarily a business and policy summit it was a rather interesting meeting in terms of the common direction towards a more sustainable future where ICT plays a critical role.

Idris Gulluce, Deputy & Chair Committee on Public Works, Reconstruction, Transportation and Tourism of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) talked extensively about the importance of local culture and social understanding for the success of smart policies in cities.

Digital City Exchange at the 1st City Protocol workshop

1st City Protocol Workshop: Building together better cities 16-17 July 2012, Barcelona, Spain

By Orestis Tsinalis

The 1st City Protocol workshop was an event co-organised by the Barcelona City Council, Cisco, and GDF SUEZ with participants from 22 companies, 33 cities, 19 organisations, and 17 universities. Imperial College London was represented in the workshop by a team of researchers from the Digital City Exchange programme.

The City Protocol is a new initiative that aims to bring together stakeholders from the industry, city councils, non-governmental organisations, and the academia with the goal to create a common global-scale framework for collaboration and innovation in cities.

Towards a UK research roadmap for the Internet of Things

RCUK-TSB Internet of Things R&D roadmapping workshop 11-12 July 2012, Loughborough University

By Orestis Tsinalis

The Internet of Things (IoT) R&D roadmapping workshop was an event co-organised by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) that brought together participants from both academia and industry, with the objective of mapping “the current research landscape relevant to the Internet of Things, the research and R&D challenges for research institutions and businesses in the Internet of Things space, and the future skills needed and challenges to enable the UK to lead internationally in delivering and realising the IoT capability”.

Agent Technology for Energy Systems (ATES2012) workshop

Tuesday 5 June 2012, Valencia, Spain

By Koen van Dam

The Agents and Autonomous Multi-Agent Systems conference (AAMAS) is one of the leading events for those interested in everything that is agent. Since 2010, Alex Rogers and his colleagues from Southampton University organise a workshop at the AAMAS conference focused solely on applications in the energy domain: Agent Technology for Energy Systems (ATES).

ATES2012, held on the 5th of June 2012 in Valencia, Spain, was an excellent opportunity to present the Digital City Exchange (DCE) programme to a community of modellers and domain experts. While we only just got started with the project and it was too early to present detailed outcomes, a short paper was accepted for the workshop after review and feedback from the workshop participants on the initial stages was positive.

Internet of Things Tech Meetup 8 #iotlondon

Tuesday 22 May 2012, Crayon London

By Koen van Dam

After previously attending the Internet of Things Meetup Meetup #6, it was only a matter of time before DCE would return to another edition of this informal get-together of a community focused on machine to machine communication, open data and trying to change the world. For IoT Meetup #8 the talks had a smart city/smart home/energy focus.

Before the three speakers gave their short presentation sparking off some interesting debates, Owen Davies explained the recent rebranding of Pachube to Cosm. In addition to providing a fresh new design and a name which is easier to pronounce (no more feeling smug hearing other people struggle with this after finally getting it right yourself), the new website wants to offer users more than just a place to store their data to be processed elsewhere.

CASA Smart Cities: Bridging physical and digital #casaconf

Friday 20 April 2012, Senate House, University of London

By Koen van Dam

CASA, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL chose “Smart Cities: bridging physical and digital” [pdf] as the theme of their conference held at the Senate House in Central London on the 20th of April 2012. Smart cities and digital… of course DCE had to be there.

Prof Michael Batty, chair of the management board of CASA, opened the conference by going back 40 years in the past to highlight the many advances of the digital age, most notably the rise of the internet, and how they have changed life in cities.