TMCnet News

Call to make Hull a 'smart city' with useful technology ; Analysing data will improve everyday life, conference told [Hull Daily Mail (England)]
[July 23, 2014]

Call to make Hull a 'smart city' with useful technology ; Analysing data will improve everyday life, conference told [Hull Daily Mail (England)]


(Hull Daily Mail (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) InShort Jon Moss, a founder of technology centre C4DI, has called for Hull to become a "smart city" where information is used to improve everyday life.

AN INVISIBLE network of information could make Hull a better place to live, a founder of digital hub C4DI has said.

John Moss, who helped create the IT start-up centre in Queen Street, is pushing for it to become a "smart city".

Sensors that monitor everything from traffic to rainfall could be used to improve everyday life for inhabitants, he said at a University of Hull conference.

Called Making Connections with Big Data, it looked at how statistics could help businesses and customers.

Speaking afterwards, Mr Moss said: "We've built this software platform called the City Engine, which can accept massive data sets.

"It could help with almost anything. For example, you could overlay violent crime data with the closing times of pubs. Those two bits of data separately mean nothing but bring them together and there might be a correlation." Mr Moss is seeking to work on the issue with Hull City Council.



He said British cities such as Manchester were already getting in on the act, while some other nations were well ahead.

Mr Moss said: "One thing I'm particularly keen on is live sensors.


"We're looking to deploy live sensors to start measuring traffic flow, temperature, things like that.

"In Singapore, they have pressure sensors on top of the streetlights, which are triggered when they think it's going to rain, and taxi drivers get notification so there's more chance to go and pick up a fare." Another example he gave was Boston in America, where acoustic instruments could pick up gunshots.

Mr Moss was joined by speakers including maritime expert Rear Admiral Nick Lambert and business adviser John Morton.

Ben Wrigley, business intelligence manager at East Yorkshire telecom giant KC, talked about how his firm had changed its use of infor mation.

After the conference, he said: "It's about how you change the culture of business to use data in ways you haven't beforehand.

"We've built a view of our data that enables us to understand our customers better. "We had lots and lots of different information sitting across the system but we had no 360-degree view - we were data-rich but information-poor." The conference was chaired by Professor Richard Vidgen, of Hull University Business School.

(c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]