New initiative for data-sharing launched in London

A three-month advanced data-sharing trial is underway in East London.

Start-up Urban Data Collective is working with the SHIFT innovation district based at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to demonstrate the concept of an ‘urban data commons’, where data from public and private sources, including real-time data, is pooled and used in agreed ways to tackle challenges.

Urban Data Collective’s Urban Data Exchange platform provides a ‘sharing layer’ where live data from sensors, buildings and other smart infrastructure around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is made accessible in a harmonised way for further innovation.

Organisations taking part in the trial include UCL university, sensor provider Aeternum, and the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which manages the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and was set up by the Mayor in 2012.

Several cities, including London and Birmingham, have highlighted the need for sources beyond city-owned and open data to tackle their biggest challenges.

Energy use case

“While many people still talk about data-sharing and data spaces for smart cities and communities, we are actually bringing these to life,” said Alex Gluhak, CEO of Urban Data Collective.

“We hope the trial will seed the grounds for many more innovative projects that will deliver real benefits to stakeholders on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and its co-located community and encourage more organisations to engage in data-sharing activities.”

The initial use case focuses on renewable energy generation at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, using data from solar photovoltaic panels and environmental sensors to optimise the use of renewable energy and the management of renewable energy generation infrastructure.

The project brings together data on particulate pollution, solar intensity, weather and energy to better understand how these can be used to forecast energy generation and enable predictive maintenance.

“The learnings from this trial will have really wide relevance for East London and cities globally – using existing but largely unused data from across organisations to optimise existing infrastructure is a good example of how innovative use of data is helping us tackle some of the biggest issues facing cities today,” said Nick Turner, Data and Digital Manager at SHIFT.

Enabling infrastructure

Rather than making all data open, the Urban Data Exchange enables participants to set governance rules such as licensing terms and conditions to protect commercial and other sensitivities, and to manage service level agreements.

The platform is aligned with Open & Agile Smart Cities’ Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms – common standards for APIs and data models.

“It’s enabling a data-sharing ecosystem,” Gluhak told Cities Today.

He sees many additional opportunities for cities to use a data commons approach, including for planning and optimising electric vehicle charging infrastructure, traffic and energy management, and reaching air quality and net zero goals.

As cities add more Internet of Things sensors and tools from various vendors that generate real-time data, Gluhak said it’s important that they “unlock this data from these proprietary systems” and bring it together into one place to enable collaboration and insights.

There could also be potential for data monetisation for cities and private companies further down the line, but this is not an element of the current trial.

Urban Data Collective is also working with Surrey County Council to use data to improve operational performance and future planning capabilities, as well as with a water company. Another project is being developed around regional data spaces for air quality and traffic data across the UK.