Cities face numerous challenges - increasing and ageing populations, congestion, poor air quality, strain on infrastructure (water and energy), and the need to become more sustainable. At the same time council budgets are reducing. At the heart of many solutions to address these challenges is data. With the advent of 5G and the exponential growth of connected devices, cities need to prepare now to handle the imminent deluge of data.
Currently most data is stored in siloes both with public and sector organisations. To develop the data market this data needs to be broken out of its siloes and made re-usable by all.
Cities are currently working with business and academia to determine how to store and share this data and more importantly the business cases, value chains and procurement models that will underpin the investment needed to develop a city's data architecture.
An example of where this has been successful is the London Datastore which has been used by numerous developers to build products such as Citymapper. However, outside London there have been a number of attempts to develop a market for data with little success.
One of the challenges of city data is how to engage citizens and give local residents a say in how their data is used; this is particularly pertinent following a number of high-profile cases where personal data has been misused and now has a higher profile due to the introduction of GDPR regulation.
This event will focus on four themes:
- Fixing the plumbing – developing a data architecture for cities
- The business case/value chain – use cases explained
- From to data to application solution – how can data help address the challenges?
- Where next? AI and Machine Learning - how to harness for good
Who will benefit from attending?
This event will inform both:
- City Strategy Managers and CIO leads responsible for maintaining and developing the city infrastructure and IT systems in a fast-changing environment where budgets are continually being squeezed
- Supply-side companies who are making strategic decisions about how to develop their products and services to provide the best solutions across the city ecosystem, from sensors at the edge to telecoms connectivity, data storage, platforms, analytics, applications and user experiences
The meeting agenda will include keynotes from senior people in their sector grappling with these challenges across cities and panel discussions where delegates will have the opportunity to ask questions and debate the topic. There will also be updates on current UK Cities news.
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