Background

Thames Valley Berkshire Live Labs – Integrated Urban Mobility in Berkshire, UK

Background

Berkshire is one of UK’s most densely populated urban environments and suffers from heavy traffic congestion as vehicles travel into and out of London. Alongside traffic issues, this situation causes many other challenges from severe health problems for citizens to increased energy consumption in the area. The Thames Valley Berkshire Live Labs project aims to improve these conditions and increase urban quality of life by offering AI and data-driven solutions spanning the areas of mobility, communications, energy, health and the environment.

The project has received €5.5 million in funding from the UK government under the umbrella of the ADEPT (Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport) SMART Places Live Labs programme.

The funding was distributed as follows: Data (€1,650,000), IoT hardware (€1,650,000), project management (€330,000), hardware modification (€825,000), innovation competition (€550,000), commons (€220,000) and contingency (€660,000).

The project is expected to be completed in November 2021 and includes following partners:

• O2/Telefonica (project lead): Key strategic role in collecting and cleansing mobile phone network and sensor data and providing this to relevant partners and stakeholders. Together with programme managers, O2/Telefonica is responsible for

reporting the outcomes and benefits of the project. • Siemens: Gathering data from 26 sensors over a period of six months in each area under investigation. • WAYRA (tech-driven, open innovation hub): Recruiting start-ups. • Smarter Grid Solutions (energy enterprise software company):

Providing energy solutions. • Reading Borough Council: Grant holder and client. • Slough Borough Council: Grant holder and client. • University of Reading: Disseminating outcomes in the form of research publications. • Multiple start-ups related to data science and the Internet of

Things (IoT).

Within this framework, the Thames Valley Berkshire Live Labs project focuses on five interrelated sub-projects, each encouraging community involvement with opportunities to get involved through live trials as they develop:

• Road Surface Quality: This sub-project predicts the appearance of potholes on roads. In conjunction with the Traffic

Flow sub-project (below), this will create an intelligent traffic system capable of reducing congestion. • Traffic Flow: This sub-project aims to improve the way traffic flow signals are operated in order to reduce congestion. This will result in a model capable of predicting traffic patterns up to 20 minutes in advance. The model will be controlled via a