Ten programmes chosen as recipients of £1.5m cash pot
A competition run by the Geospatial Commission and Innovate UK has picked 10 projects as recipients of a total of £1.5m in Cabinet Office funding.
The money was awarded following a competition that invited proposals for innovative uses of location-based data and crowdsourced information.
The 10 winning projects and bidders are:
- The Neighbourhood Safety Index – Synced Ltd
A project to use data to create an “integrated live score of how safe a neighbourhood is”.
- Communitree – Forest Research, The Open University, and Treework Services Ltd
This programme aims to build the world’s largest “urban tree map”. The map will be designed for use by both the public and private sector.
- Pinpoint – Cartographix Ltd
Improving the “indoor navigation of public buildings” is the aim of this project. To do so, it will use data from smartphone location sensors and WiFi networks.
- Crowdsouring for a Digital Geospatial Joint Strategic Needs Assessment – University of Exeter and City Science Corporation Limited
This project will bring together information from various sources with the aim of helping people “take an active role in health outcomes”, while allowing the NHS to better target resources.
- YOUR.VU.CITY – Vu.City, Pipers Projects Limited, and University College London
A programme to “engage the public with the planning process” to help better understand urban environment.
- Crowd Blackspot Intelligence for 5G Rollout – Ranplan Wireless Network Design and the University of Warwick
Informing the rollout of 5G networks via “crowdsourcing service complaints” is the aim of this project.
- Routing Innovation through Data Engineering – Beeline
This scheme aims to encourage cycling and improve safety by using data to “develop route optimisation”.
- Coreo – Natural Apptitude
A scheme dedicated to creating a platform which will enable people to “build and run geospatial citizen science projects”. The aim is to improve how geospatial data is collected, managed, and maintained. - StreetFocus – Cyclestreets and Planit
This project aims to help local people “identify areas that need improvements to street infrastructure” in their local community.
- Generating crowdsourcing geospatial data – Transreport Limited
Achieving a better understanding of accessibility issues for people with one or more of a range of disabilities is the goal of this programme. Work will be undertaken to improve how data is collected, and how it is then put to use in designing and delivering services.
Minister for implementation, Oliver Dowden, said: “We are investing in location-based data technology to improve public services and the way people experience them. I’m delighted to see such innovative ideas come forward, which will help people in their everyday lives and keep the UK at the forefront of this exciting new technology.”
The Geospatial Commission saw set up in April 2018 and is back by £80m of government funding. Chaired by economist Sir Andrew Dilnot, the goal of the commission is to identify and implement ways to release what the government estimates as £11bn of additional value that geospatial data could provide to the UK economy each year.
