Innovate UK awards smart city initiative to 11-strong consortium

Innovate UK has started to lay the foundations for smarter transport networks in the UK, announcing that it has awarded a collaborative transport research project to a consortium of leading European industry, academic and transport authority partners.

The ‘oneTRANSPORT’ project, which will span two years and is valued at £3.5 million, has been put in the hands of a consortium that consists of eleven partners comprising Arup, Buckinghamshire County Council, Clearview Traffic Group, Hertfordshire County Council, Highways England, Imperial College London, Northamptonshire County Council, Oxfordshire County Council, Traak Systems, Worldsensing and InterDigital Europe.

Innovate UK says it will part-fund the initiative, which has a primary objective of improving travel experiences on a truly nationwide basis by enabling access to higher quality multi-modal transport data.

It hopes this will bring about a new approach into the use of open-data platforms, making for a fairer and more accessible market place, with Internet of Things (IoT) technology opening up formerly ‘closed’ data-realms in the public and private sector.

The UK’s innovation agency also believes that the initiative will fuel the exploration of new revenues for local authorities.

oneTRANSPORT is a future-proof strategy that can be leveraged to position the transport industry in a strong position rolling into the Internet of Things future, said Alan Carlton, vice president, InterDigital Europe.

InterDigital is thrilled to be a member of this exciting Innovate UK-supported project and looks forward to bringing our IoT expertise to this collaborative initiative.

Tim Gammons, global intelligent transport systems leader at Arup, added the project will act as an important step-change in how data is distributed and utilised by travellers and transport operators.

If we are going to address how transport can be used more intelligently, then projects such as this are absolutely key. Sophisticated analysis of data will be a part of so many of the urban mobility solutions of the future and it’s great to see work being done to try to put in place a single platform that will help bring innovation and fresh thinking to the industry.”

Simon Spooner, Partner

Sign up to our newsletter

Meet our experts