Connexin and Cisco deliver the UK’s first purpose-built Smart City Operating System for Hull City Council.
Hull will become the first city in the UK to benefit from its own purpose-built Smart City Operating System (OS). Using an Internet of Things (IoT) foundation to its digital strategy, the CityOS platform provided by Smart City Operator Connexin enables Hull to become a programmable city, connecting essential council services and centralising information that can be analysed and used to promote a better quality of life for residents.
Following the success of being crowned the UK City of Culture 2017, Hull City Council has forged a partnership with Connexin to deliver its ambitious plans to make Hull a world-leading Smart City. The Smart City OS will allow Hull City Council to add and connect new smart, sustainable technology solutions.
What is a Smart City operating system?
Hull City Council will use Connexin’s CityOS platform to integrate, view, manage, and respond to information from a range of council services, sensors, and systems, using a single intelligent dashboard.
Information from current and future data producing deployments — such as smart lighting, parking, traffic, waste management, and Wi-Fi deployments — is to be integrated into the “single pane of glass” software platform.
Councillor Daren Hale, Deputy Leader of Hull City Council said: “Developing Hull as a Smart City will give us the opportunity to work with public and private sector partners to deliver real benefits to communities, businesses, and visitors to Hull.
The project will involve innovative technological solutions to enhance data sharing and decision making, which will help us to deliver more effective services, including everything from traffic management to health and social care.
The system pulls together information that currently sits within separate council computer systems to enable city-wide management of the city’s public assets in real time using state-of-the-art technology.
Residents will receive better information to make choices about transport, traffic, and parking. But this will be just the beginning of what is possible. As the project develops, it will create a demand for a new digitally skilled workforce in the city, so we will need to invest in skills and training for younger generations so they are prepared for the new types of jobs that will be created in the digital sector.”
One of the smartest cities in the world
Furqan Alamgir, Co-Founder and CEO of Connexin said:
“We’re thrilled to be partnering up with our home city and are committed to making Hull a world-leading Smart City to foster economic development and enhance many aspects of liveability, workability, and sustainability.
Our platform will enable Hull to become a 'programmable city' and move from outdated siloed service-driven technologies to a central platform to improve service delivery, reduce costs, and to make the most of new technologies such as IoT, AI, and machine learning algorithms.
Connexin’s Smart City Operating System is built around the Cisco Kinetic for Cities platform which normalises and aggregates data from a range of IoT sensor types into a certified set of urban service domains such as waste, lighting, and parking. Cisco Kinetic has been deployed in projects worldwide and brings over 70 out-of-the-box Cisco certified integrations, which Cisco actively maintain and update. The Connexin and Cisco partnership gives Hull the ability to manage sensors from multiple vendors in one place, removing the reliance on legacy systems and their associated costs.”
Scot Gardner, Chief Executive, Cisco UK & Ireland, says:
“When you start to think of a city as programmable, there is opportunity to not only improve individual services with technology, but use combined data insight from those services to create a holistic, actionable view for local authorities.” He added: “Hull City Council are investing in the future of their city to help it become one of the smartest in the world, and we’re delighted to be a part of that with Connexin.”
Smart city innovation
One of the services which is to be integrated into the Smart City Platform is a recent deployment of waste management sensors.
The new software also opens the door for several exciting innovation projects and developments. Much of the information will be made available on an open platform to drive new ideas and solutions to directly benefit the local economy.
Additionally, with open APIs, local and global independent software vendors and city application developers can plug into the management infrastructure and provide public service capabilities.