As part of its smart city project, the UK city of Cambridge has revealed that it will build a digital mosaic of street-by-street, minute-by-minute information that will generate trusted IoT data.

Smart cities will generate huge amounts of data and ith privacy concerns in mind it is hoped this data will be used to improve the quality of life for citizens. Bristol has for some years now been running an ambitious IoT initiative called Bristol is Open, which helped it be named as the UK’s leading smart city last year.

Now, Cambridge will join the progressive tech ranks with an ‘Urban Data Project’ that aims to create a ‘trust infrastructure’ for urban data. Data is collected by Telensa Multi-Sensor Pods, using its proprietary network technology, installed on streetlight poles, with sensors including video and radar feeding into a powerful edge compute platform. The pods run on Microsoft Azure IoT Edge and feature real-time AI and machine learning to extract insights from the raw data.

According to Telensa, it enables cities to collect, protect and use their data for the benefit of all citizens. “Urban data is the mosaic of street-by-street, minute-by-minute information that makes up a city’s digital twin. It includes mapping how people use the city, the mix of traffic on the roads, the hyper-local air quality and noise levels. This data is incredibly valuable for designing better city infrastructure, delivering more efficient city services, and making everything more transparent to empower citizens. It is also potentially valuable to industries such as retail, real estate and insurance.”

Following intensive product development during 2018, the first deployment is scheduled to take place in Cambridge in March.

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