The Connected City Summit schedule

David is a freelance journalist and broadcaster across consumer and enterprise technology, cybersecurity and mobile. He has written for The Metro, International Business Times,TechRadar, CNET, Wired and Computer Weekly.

He is ITV Good Morning Britain’s regular technology expert, a cybercrime-buster for BBC Watchdog, consumer champion on BBC Rip Off Britain and co-host of Challenge TV mobile technology show Planet of the Apps.

Smart City Dynamics and Emergency Response

IoT technologies are progressively enabling the activation of the city’s material environment, to generate a constant stream of data that can be employed to reveal patterns of urban dynamics that until recently remained unobserved. In this talk I will look back at more than a decade of experimental systems research conducted at our lab and relate our work to key pervasive computing trends. I will then discuss through specific case studies how data from these and similar systems have enabled explorations into how the evolving patterns of human dynamics are reflected onto City rhythms. I will conclude by highlighting current work which employs the outcomes of this research towards improving the effectiveness of ambulance services in London.

Prof. George Roussos leads the Pervasive Computing Group at Birkbeck College, University of London, an internationally recognised research centre in mobile computing and the IoT with particular expertise in networked RFID and mobility analytics. His work pioneered participatory cyber‐physical computing as the predominant methodology for the construction of mobile and pervasive computing systems. With contributions in systems architecture, privacy protection and human dynamics his work demonstrated how the user’s activity can be exploited as the core ingredient for building such systems. Prof Roussos is the author of four books and over 100 research papers. He was a member of the EU‐China Internet of Things Expert Group in 2010/12, the 2011 Medalist for best environmental project at the British Computer Society awards and since 2004 serves on the ACM US Public Policy Committee.

IoT, Big Data, Sensors & Cities: Joining Up, Communicating & Trusting 'Smart'

Data is everywhere yet it is far from joined up, coherent or used to make anything truly 'Smart'. The talk explores big data in London, how new visualisations can be used to make sense of data in the city. It examines how 'location' can be used to finally join everything together to help us not only understand the city around us but also our understanding of place and place in a world of sensors and IoT. Finally it looks into the opportunity that is the 'Smart Park' - the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a park with plans for 10,000's of sensors to provide a glimpse of the future.

Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith is Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at The Bartlett, University College London. Andy is a Reader in Digital Urban Systems and Editor-in-Chief of Future Internet Journal, he is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Greater London Authority Smart London Board and Course Founder of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation and MSc in Smart Cities at University College London.

Prognostics and the City

Rob will talk about machine prognostics and make the link to how the high levels of connectivity will lead to improved reliability and availability of city infrastructure. Explaining how previous experience implementing solutions in high-end sectors and seeing the benefits, formed the vision for Senseye and their product PROGNOSYS. Lowering the barriers to entry through the use of machine learning and embedding domain knowledge that makes a complex problem space finite and turning prognostic capability into a commodity.

Rob is the Chief Technology Officer at Senseye, with a BEng in Mechanical Systems Engineering. He has spent the last 20 years designing and deploying asset management and condition monitoring systems within the aerospace, defence and transport sectors. Having a mechanical engineering background in the software sector has enabled Rob to bridge the gap between the end user and the software teams he leads. Now in Senseye this experience in guiding the vision for the development of PROGNOSYS the first complete machine prognostic solution, fit for the Industrial Internet of Things. Rob is passionate about maximising asset and equipment usage but believes in keeping things simple.

Milton Keynes is the fastest growing city in UK and an economic success story. However, such rapid growth is creating stress points in the city infrastructure and new intelligent solutions are needed to ensure that the forecast growth remains sustainable. MK:Smart is a £16M integrated innovation and support programme, which focuses on leveraging large-scale city data to provide solutions to key demand issues in MK. Central to MK:Smart is the state-of-the-art MK Data Hub, which provides a generic enabling infrastructure, available to academia and business alike, promoting data-intensive open innovation. In this presentation I will illustrate the key aspects of the MK:Smart project and will show examples of innovative data-driven solutions which are being developed in the project.

Prof Enrico Motta has a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from the UK’s Open University, where is currently a Professor in Knowledge Technologies. He has authored over 300 refereed publications and his h-index is 56. His research focuses on large scale data integration, pattern extraction and visualization, to enable users to make sense of large amounts of data and support robust decision-making processes. He currently leads MK:Smart, a £16M initiative which aims to tackle key barriers to economic growth in Milton Keynes, UK, through the deployment of innovative data-intensive solutions. He is also working on a novel environment for exploring and making sense of scholarly data, which leverages innovative techniques in large-scale data mining, semantic technologies and visual analytics. Prof Motta is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and, over the years, has advised strategic research boards and governments in several countries, including UK, US, The Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Finland, and Estonia.

Deep Learning Applications for Smart Cities

Deep Learning is a new and exciting set of technologies with potential applications to many areas - including Smart cities, However, Deep Learning technologies are rapidly evolving. This paper first explores the basics of Deep Learning technologies and then explores how they apply to Smart cities. Unlike most papers on this subject, we do not take an academic view. Instead we explore the latest developments of Deep Learning and extrapolate how they could apply to future cities over the next 5 to 10 years. The paper takes a multi-disciplinary approach focusing on the rapid evolution of Deep Learning technologies and their implication for Smart cities.

Ajit’s work involves applying machine learning techniques to complex problems in the IoT (Internet of Things) and Telecoms domains. His research is based on two courses taught by Ajit – Big Data for Telecoms(Oxford University) and the citysciences program (UPM –Technical University of Madrid).

His latest book is included as a course book at Stanford University for Data Science for Internet of Things. Ajit is also writing a paper on Deep Learning applications for Smart cities. In 2015, Ajit was included in 16 Great Data Science bloggers on Data Science Central, Top 100 blogs on KDnuggets and Top 50 people to follow on Twitter by IoT central for IoT. In 2009, Ajit was nominated to the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of the Internet’ council. In 2011, he was nominated to the World Smart Capital  program (Amsterdam). Ajit moderates/chairs Oxford University’s Next  generation mobile applications panel. In 2012, he was nominated to the board of Connected Liverpool – Resilient Liverpool programs – based in the city of Liverpool for their Smart city vision. Ajit has been involved in IoT based roles for the webinos project (EU funded Fp7 project). Ajit has also been an advisor to the European Internet Foundation on Technology and Policy issues since 2009 and is the co-author of ‘The Digital  World in 2030′. He is also involved in creating a community around the issues in this report in the Tech/Policy space. Since May 2005, he has founded and run the OpenGardens blog which is widely respected in the mobile/telecoms industry.

Data Infrastructure for Smart Cities

The systems that operate the infrastructure of cities have evolved in a fragmented fashion across several generations of technology, causing city utilities and services to operate sub-optimally and limiting the creation of new value-added services. The integration of cross-domain city data offers a new wave of opportunities to mitigate some of these impacts and enables city systems to draw effectively on interoperable data that will be used to deliver smarter cities.

Despite the considerable potential of city data, current smart cities initiatives have mainly addressed the problem of data management from a technology perspective, have treated it as a single and disjoint ICT development project, and have disregarded stakeholders and data needs. As a consequence, such initiatives are susceptible to failure from inadequate stakeholder input, requirements neglecting, and information fragmentation and overload.

To enter into the new era of data exploitation and data infrastructures cities will need to adopt a more strategic and outcomes-oriented approach and this research is about this journey. This talk will give an introduction on a systematic business-model-driven framework, named SMARTify, which guides the design of large and highly interconnected data infrastructures that are provided and supported by multiple stakeholders. The framework can be used to model, elicit and reason about the requirements of the service, technology, organization, value, and governance aspects of smart cities.

I will discuss very briefly the "Data for London" case study which has shown that the SMARTify framework provides decision makers with the clarity they need to think strategically about how systems, businesses and interested citizens can draw effectively on a vast supply of cross-domain city data through a data infrastructure.

The design of robust data infrastructures can facilitate cross-domain data exploitation, the emergence of new profitable business models, and the development of an increase range of new and engaging services in smart cities.

Larissa Suzuki is a PhD Candidate in Software Systems Engineering at University College London / DCE Imperial College London. Her research aims at contributing to a growing body of knowledge in smart cities and urban data management. She is an EPSRC, Google and Intel Scholar. Larissa holds a BSc in Computer Science and an MPhil in Electrical Engineering, and was a Visiting PhD Student at MIT. Larissa is a senior teaching assistant at UCL and has published several research papers in leading academic journals and conferences, and has received several awards and recognitions during her academic career (Intel, EPSRC, BFWG, Google, ACM, EIT ICT Labs, McKinsey&Company, Inspiration Awards for Women). She has interned IBM and at ARUP working on smart cities applications. Her research agenda includes, but not limited to: software middleware, platform ecosystems, urban data management, value chain, supply chain management and business models.

Sensory Mapping

How can we change architecture to design more for the people and less for the architects? Daniele Quercia presents crowd-based solutions with which urban planners can get valuable information about what kind of urban design is attractive to the people. This leads to GPS systems that show you the "most beautiful" path to your destination and to indicators about the beauty of a city. More about this on a recent BBC article Daniele wrote bbc.in/1qFwBLs

Daniele Quercia leads the Social Dynamics group at Bell Labs in Cambridge (UK), has been named one of Fortune magazine's 2014 Data All-Stars, and spoke about “happy maps” at TED. His research has been focusing in the area of urban informatics and received best paper awards from Ubicomp 2014 and from ICWSM 2015, and an honourable mention from ICWSM 2013. He was Research Scientist at Yahoo Labs, a Horizon senior researcher at the University of Cambridge, and Postdoctoral Associate at MIT. He received his PhD from UC London. His thesis was sponsored by Microsoft Research and was nominated for BCS Best British PhD dissertation in Computer Science.

Robots fighting poverty, saving energy, creating jobs and empowering workers.

Q-Bot combines robotics with one of the most pressing needs; upgrading our existing buildings to make them more comfortable, reduce cold draughts and improve energy efficiency. In doing so Q-Bot turns difficult, dirty and disruptive jobs into cost effective and efficient processes, to create a real, scalable and cost effective solution to meeting targets for CO2 reduction and affordable warmth.

The company’s robots are able to autonomously survey and map the built environment, using a range of advanced technology including 3D scanning, artificial intelligence and information systems. This information provides a wealth of opportunities, for example identifying maintenance that might be required, e.g. the nature and location of leaking pipes, deal with hazards such as asbestos, or validate the quality of work done. The presentation will describe how we can use intelligent systems and advanced tools to maintain, upgrade and construct our buildings or infrastructure and some of the benefits that this approach has.

Mathew is the Managing Director of Q-Bot where he leads the development and commercialisation of innovative robotics technologies for the construction industry. He has 12 years’ experience as a founder of high tech start-ups where he has turned his ideas into desirable products and in turn seen them generate 7 and 8 figure turnovers.

He was educated at Bath University (MEng 1st Class Honours), Imperial College and The Royal College of Art in Engineering and Design (Joint Masters, MA & MSc). His technical background includes electrical and mechanical engineering, innovation mechanisms, intellectual property, industrial design, controls and programming (vision, analytics and interfaces).

Esteve Almirall serves as Associate Professor in Esade Business School where his research focus on Innovation, particularly on Open Innovation and Data Science. His work has been referenced in HBR and he is a frequent speaker in conferences around Innovation, Big Data and Data Science, Smart Cities, Living Labs and Open Data/Gov. His background is a mix of Management Science (PhD,MRes,MBA) and Computer Science /A.I. (MSc, MRes). Esteve is also highly involved in European Projects and EU organizations having coordinated and participated in many EU projects on Innovation and Smart Cities. He is passionate about how we can use IT to redefine governance and reinvent citizenship in the XXI century transforming cities from service providers to ecosystem orchestrators and therefore fostering growth and promoting entrepreneurship.

Bill Clee is the CEO and founder of Asset Mapping. A design engineer by training, he spent his early career designing systems for data centres, oil & gas and shipbuilding industries around the world. With high expertise in the domain of managing complex systems, he transferred to the construction industry in the UK. After completing a number of building projects, Bill was invited to work with Honeywell on the CCTV system for the London Olympic site. It was here where Asset Mapping was born as an online platform to visualise the location and status of the assets on site. Today, Asset Mapping is a consolidated Internet of Things engine for asset digitisation.

Joe Dignan is the Interim Head of Business Development and leading Smart City Expert at the Future City Catapult. He was previously the Chief Analyst - EMEA Public Sector of Ovum, an international research company leading their Industry Technologies team producing research and analysis on the use of technology in government. He joined Ovum from Microsoft where he was the World Wide Industry Managing Director for Local and Regional Government. During his thirty years in the business he has been involved internationally in national security, economic development, education and digital enablement. He is a regular speaker including keynotes at Smart Cities Africa, SmarterCities, eIndia, eDubai and an expert speaker for the EC in China.

Creating the Open Programmable City

How cities work is changing. Developments in software, hardware and telecom networks are enabling more interaction between people and places and more machine-to-machine communication, creating an internet of things. Opening-up and making sense of this gives citizens more ability to interact, work and play with their city. Smart city technologies will be able to respond in real-time to everyday events including congestion, waste management, entertainment events, e-democracy, energy supply and more. Together with many partners, Bristol Is Open is creating an open programmable city region.

Suzanne is the City Innovation Manager for Bristol City Council, part of a department called Bristol Futures that looks at sustainability, resilience and technology challenges in Bristol and how to address them in partnership with other cities across the world. The City innovation team have deployed the Bristol Is Open infrastructure: fibre, wireless mile and mesh network, run innovation projects on energy, data and transport, and supported digital inclusion. Their approach is to work in partnership with citizens and organisations in Bristol to co-create solutions, looking for external funding to pilot and test new approaches. Prior to working as City Innovation Manager, Suzanne worked for the Higher Education Funding Council for England where she worked for 10 years on research and innovation policy and key account manager for several universities.

Mark is an experienced technologist, his early corporate successes led Mark to form his own enterprise software company, producing and selling to Universities and institutions. A hands-on role, Mark executed his idea from concept to maturity, while also performing the international sales for an advanced engineering company.

Mark is a former Senior Adviser at UK Trade & Investment, where he used his time to build a contacts in technology, IoT and Smartcities sectors, as well as the investment and accelerator environment. Managing a team of seven, his role facilitated a good understanding of the London technology environment.

Mark has continued his passion for supporting Start-up and Scale up organisations by joining London & Partners as the tech & urban specialist on the Mayor’s international business programme, helping London companies internationalise.

Creating the Open Programmable City

How cities work is changing. Developments in software, hardware and telecom networks are enabling more interaction between people and places and more machine-to-machine communication, creating an internet of things. Opening-up and making sense of this gives citizens more ability to interact, work and play with their city. Smart city technologies will be able to respond in real-time to everyday events including congestion, waste management, entertainment events, e-democracy, energy supply and more. Together with many partners, Bristol Is Open is creating an open programmable city region.

Suzanne is the City Innovation Manager for Bristol City Council, part of a department called Bristol Futures that looks at sustainability, resilience and technology challenges in Bristol and how to address them in partnership with other cities across the world. The City innovation team have deployed the Bristol Is Open infrastructure: fibre, wireless mile and mesh network, run innovation projects on energy, data and transport, and supported digital inclusion. Their approach is to work in partnership with citizens and organisations in Bristol to co-create solutions, looking for external funding to pilot and test new approaches. Prior to working as City Innovation Manager, Suzanne worked for the Higher Education Funding Council for England where she worked for 10 years on research and innovation policy and key account manager for several universities.

Michael Burns works within the Research Strategy and Innovation Office with specific responsibility for the University’s Future Cities offering and, in particular, how the new campus development can be used to drive the research, teaching and commercial collaborations around this.

The main project focus is in the creation of a Smart Campus.

He has a background in project development and management with experience across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

Asa is a creative technologist, civic hacker, lapsed mathematician and co-founder of MadLab – a community space for science, technology and art based in Manchester – where he gets to experiment with new & emerging technologies in collaboration with others. Recently this has entailed running lots of IoT workshops, and managing MadLab’s Arts+Tech creative practice accelerator programme.

MadLab is one of the UK's most active creative community makerspaces, with more than 15,000 visitors a year and more than 50 regular meet-ups covering everything from software, app & games development through to electronics, film-making, fiction writing, book clubs, and more.

Niraj has been at Spacehive – a crowdfunding platform for civic projects - since its inception. During his stint he has worked in almost every part of Spacehive, and now grows the community of Spacehive users – from cities to businesses to local people trying to shape their communities. In his spare time, he is a local councillor in Harrow, with a specific focus on engagement & innovation. This has given him a good understanding of local government and the challenges & opportunities they face, and allowed him to develop our partnerships in cities accordingly. He is always looking for ways to give people power and opportunities, and has a keen eye for projects that push the boundaries or make a big impact in communities.

Tomas Diez is a Venezuelan-born urbanist, who specialises in digital fabrication and its implications on future cities. He is co-founder of the Smart Citizen project and StudioP52 in Barcelona, and director of Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC. He is developing a new framework for cities to engage with digital fabrication and distributed sensing as urban strategy tools, to create positive social, economic and environmental impacts. He is a tutor in Design Products at the RCA.

Michael Kohn is founder and CEO of Stickyworld Ltd, a visual communications platform that makes it easy for organisations to involve wide groups of people in making better products, services, buildings, places and cities together. Founded in 2010, Stickyworld has attracted a growing number of customers from government, energy, construction, architecture and design sectors. A former architect, Michael’s career spans 20 years including award-winning concept design work, administration of multi-million pound construction projects, university research and lecturing, and collaborative technology R&D. Stickyworld’s platform supports the full lifecycle of projects and is ideal for the development of future cities to capture insights and support active participation from citizens and stakeholders.

Alexander loves designing and managing new experiences at the intersection of innovative technologies, food and communities.

He is interested in how technology affects our social fabric, the relationships we form and how it shapes the urban environment we live in.

He has worked at Philips, Apple and IDEO, leading the design across tactical and strategic projects in retail, healthcare, telecoms, consumer electronics, domestic appliances and IoT. Currently he leads the Interaction Design team at Method in London - An experience design studio that crafts products and services by re-imagining customer experiences and translating business opportunities through branded behaviours.

Aktivhaus: Designing for the Plus-Energy Future

In the face of increasingly acute energy and material resource challenges, the building sector represents both the single greatest consumer of resources as well as the single most powerful lever with which to influence our environmental impact. As new buildings become more efficient, one of the most critical challenges lies in addressing the existing building stock. To make serious progress we must move beyond the mindset of reduction and instead conceive projects which not only meet their own energy needs but also provide for their neighbours. This is the mission of Aktivhaus.

Thorsten Klaus is Head of Building Systems at Aktiv-Haus, where he designed and developed a plus-energy house series for large-scale prefabricated production. He is also a Research and Development engineer at AlphaEOS, where he develops algorithms for building energy management. Thorsten has recently received his PhD in Engineering from the University of Stuttgart.

Bio-inspired 3D Printed Programmable Material Systems

Programmable 3D-printed material systems are sustainable architectural elements made from bio-plastics that can physically move and transform in response to climatic changes without the use of electronic or mechanical components. Based on bio-inspired design strategies, these novel architectural systems use 3D printing processes to build material systems that are highly in-tune with changing weather conditions. Without the need of failure-prone sensors or controllers, these systems operate differently from conventional engineering systems. Much like a pine cone or other hygroscopically actuated mechanisms found in biology, the 3D printed components operate as climate responsive surfaces whereby a simple material element performs as sensor, actuator, and regulator.

David Correa is a Canadian designer, doctoral candidate and instructor at the Institute for Computational Design (ICD) at the University of Stuttgart. At the ICD, David Correa is leading the research field of Bio-inspired 3D Printed Hygroscopic Programmable Material Systems. His research investigates the physiological relation of information intensive technologies with architectural practice and material production, with critical focus on the computational development and digital fabrication of climate responsive material systems. As a designer in both architecture and commercial digital media, David's professional work engages multiple disciplines, design scales, and environments - ranging from dense urban settings to remote regions with extreme climates.

prosolve370e is a decorative facade module that reduces air pollution in cities. When coupled with architectural surfaces, the modular system can grow to effectively counter local pollution hot-spots. The modules' forms are devised to increase the efficacy of the photocatalytic technology, employing surface enlargement for better reception of light. prosolve370e was recently installed on a hospital facade in Mexico City.

prosolve, along with another project: a consumer plastic synthesized from atmospheric CO2, represent a new materialization of climatic condition. These materials signify existing but often immaterial conditions that increasingly have impact on the way we live.    Allison Dring is an architect and co-founder of  elegant embellishments, an architectural start-up with the strategy of self-initiating projects for condition-specific spaces.

Along with Daniel Schwaag, she initiated and produced proSolve370e, a decorative, three-dimensional module that reduces air pollution in cities.  The modules were recently installed on the facade of hospital Torre de Especialidades in Mexico City.   prosolve370e has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and acquired by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum as part of the permanent collection.