InnOvaTe (IoT) Programme - London
London (United Kingdom)
Five London local authorities are working together to pioneer the deployment of “Internet of Things” (IoT) across council boundaries to rapidly address real world challenges around the theme of ‘place’. Over 2,900 sensors for a wide range of scenarios (47 trials) have collected new data sets to improve insights and positive outcomes for residents, local business and council services.
Taking place in the south-west of the UK capital in a number of London boroughs (Croydon, Kingston, Merton, Richmond, and Sutton), which combined, covers a total population of almost 1.2 million residents. A diverse set of challenges were tackled, including: resident welfare; housing; environment / climate agenda; urban economic growth; traffic / pedestrian road usage; council service improvement; and regulatory compliance.
The InnOvaTe Project is a programme notable in the often ‘solutionist’ IoT space for its user centred and community-based approach and methodology, which has allowed a wide range of use cases and a streamlined concept-to-delivery process of just 8 weeks. By focusing on challenges rather than the technology itself, the programme set out to trial IoT solutions that deliver successful outcomes - 60% of which are now incorporated into operations permanently.
Transparency and ethical principles were fundamental, and by explaining how the data was collected and for what purpose, public trust was built using public meetings, press, QR codes on lamp columns and direct conversations.
Having generated a vast amount of data, the creation of visualisations and dashboards uncovered key insights, and improved ownership and accountability of data, leading to better outcomes and greater efficiency of services.
The programme’s success has inspired local authorities across the UK to follow suit, recognising the potential to save lives, provide valuable data and insights, and support improved tactical and strategic decision-making.
At the earliest opportunity, once a seed of an idea was being considered, engagement with relevant users as well as the associated community groups was carried out to ensure that all implications were being considered - this was in turn used to establish tender criteria for procurement / commissioning purposes. Once trials went live, parties were quickly reengaged and access provided to data being captured so that further feedback and improvements could be progressed.
An IoT Data Platform was developed to collate a number of data streams together, preventing the need to log into multiple disparate systems. This also allowed new insights to be generated across unrelated data sets with minimal effort and without complex training.
All use cases deployed were held to a high standard of ethical and data standards which helped to maintain a “people-first” approach throughout. These principles ensured that only compliant use case (trial) proposals passed initial stages of assessment and conceptualisation, but were also used to give assurances during the deployment of trials as well.
By putting residents, local businesses and council decision-makers at the heart of the programme, valuable feedback was achieved from these user groups. By sharing data publicly, trust was developed with the public in general which allowed trials to not only continue without resistance, but it was also possible to incorporate feedback quickly to improve solutions.
It was imperative that all anonymous data should be shared where possible (one of the key pillars of the programme's original mandate), and as a result, extensive external messaging via a dedicated webpage and social media was undertaken to support this. In addition, free API connections were offered to community groups where possible. This approach enabled successful trials with low volumes to then quickly scale as solutions were proven and data validated by users. By engaging users directly, adoption of these solutions was then cascaded to other local authorities who were then far more confident in a proven outcome due to lowered failure risk in new (and even untested) technology. Added to this, a thorough evaluation was also conducted by the programmes Academic Partner (Essex University) to ensure lessons and key outcomes were captured and shared with the wider community.
In order to give a sense of scale, the following figures outline the impact on various user groups:
- almost 100 IoT data platform users made use of the data generated by the programme, comprising of 18 unique data streams captured from a variety of public and private sources, each with its own disparate software solution but also ingested into a core IoT data platform
- over 250 council staff directly benefited from the new data sources and insights obtained
- circa 300 vulnerable residents actively participated with in-home trials (this will expand to a further 512 residents by summer 2023), plus an additional 80 “general needs” or emergency housing residents were also involved
- 2 local cycling groups engaged the programme and actively used the data generated from IoT services deployed
- data was shared with a number of external UK government organisations and agencies, including Transport For London, the Greater London Authority (GLA) (of which benefitted hundreds of relevant officers), and also UK national agencies including the Environment Agency and Public Health England.
Perhaps the best summary of the programme is provided by Theo Blackwell, Chief Digital Officer for London at Greater London Authority, who provided the following words when asked about the IoT Programme:
"Most advanced and broad-ranging set of IoT use cases I've seen. What’s great about InnOvaTe is not only the end-delivery but the methods developed to engage users right from the start and take an idea to use-case in just a matter of weeks.”
In terms of practical outcomes, the following summary outlines some of the results achieved:
- Alerts led to the saving of 5 vulnerable adult lives who would not have survived if it were not for the IoT solution in place
- Identification of vulnerable residents who are living in fuel poverty or being malnourished leading to timely targeted interventions
- Significant reduction in fly-tipping (the illegal dumping of waste) by +/- 80% in monitored areas, with evidence obtained to support enforcement and improve long-term impact to a number of council housing estates
- Early warnings and weather forecasting used by officers to improve reaction times and deliver cost-savings to highways services in order to better manage flooding and drainage across council boundaries
- Monitoring of unused buildings which has helped curb anti-social behaviour across multiple social housing estates
- Traffic insights generated to directly support strategic transport decision-making regarding cycle lanes, one-way streets, public realm (crowd movement), pedestrianisation and unauthorised motorbike / moped / scooter use
- Visitor analytics to support funding for improving parks
- Real time parking usage data to improve road access and transport planning
- Understanding the scale of damp in properties (and likelihood of mould)
- Using wildlife sensors to support the introduction of water voles in green areas.
A process of iterative feedback was employed to tailor solutions to meet the needs of users whilst trials were ongoing - this allowed for rapid improvements and therefore swift increases in effectiveness within a short period of time.
By working with large businesses, the programme was able to unlock large amounts of corporate funding through innovation partnerships which saw both sides benefit from designing, trialling and improving new solutions together with users, which were then available to the market at large once proven successful.
