Ten British startups have been awarded £1.5 million in Cabinet Office funding to help deliver innovative new ways to use location-based data.
The Geospatial Commission, established by the Cabinet Office, held an open call for new methods of using location-data for daily use last year.
The initiatives that won out range from projects to map urban trees, to a system to optimise cyclist safety, via crowd sourcing 5G service complaints.
The Minister for Implementation, Oliver Dowden, said: “We are investing in location-based data technology to improve public services and the way people experience them.”
Here are the 10 projects selected by the Cabinet Office to receive funding:
Coreo
Project Partner: Natural Apptitude
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Coreo’s software allows anyone to create their own data collection application, which can be tailored towards geospatial initiatives and citizen science projects. Coreo allows the user to track their project in one place. Here they can run analysis on the data and manager user privileges.
Simon Smart, Senior Environmental Consultant at Black Sheep Countryside Management commented on their site that: “Coreo makes it so easy to set up, record and analyse data from our project, and the data is also optimal quality for scientific use – we relied on paper based records before!”
Routing Innovation through Data Engineering (RIDE)
Project partner: Beeline
The RIDE project is tasked with developing new ways for cyclists to navigate urban environments.
Using data analytics and engineering RIDE will provide cyclists with the best routes for safe riding.
Crowd Blackspot Intelligence for 5G Rollout
Project partners: Ranplan Wireless Network Design, University of Warwick
This project will leverage crowdsourcing techniques to help identify 5G blackspots and areas of low connectivity by analysing service complaints. Once a 5G blackspot has been idnetifed by the public, connectivity will be established in that location.
Dr Weisi Guo, from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick comment in a university post that: “COCKPIT-5G will enable the UK to be world-leaders in new technologies by getting 5G coverage in black-spots. Businesses will be better connected, which in turn improves manufacturing, and we can enhance AI and the development of autonomous vehicles.
Crowdsouring for a Digital Geospatial Joint Strategic Needs Assessment
Project partners: City Science Corporation Limited, University of Exeter
This is also a crowdsourcing driven initiative that will see members of the public gathering data on their local air quality.
This project will bring together relevant databases to allow members of the public to be more active in how the government measures, assess and addresses health outcomes in their area.
Communitree
Project partners: Forest Research, Open University, Treework Services
Communitree will develop a high quality dataset that contains the largest mapping of urban tree placement in the world. This dataset when completed can be openly used by businesses, governments and academic research institutions.
StreetFocus
Project partners: Cyclestreets, Planit
Communities will be able to automatically identify areas that need improvements to street infrastructure.
StreetFocus is another project that relies on crowdsourcing techniques, in this case they need community engagement to help identify areas that are in need of improvements, in particular deteriorate street infrastructure.
Thus helping to build a dataset that lists required street repair.
Generating Crowdsourcing Geospatial Data
Project partner: Transreport Limited
This project will research how transportation users with a wide range of disabilities experience current transport systems.
The data will be collected via crowd sourcing, and once all the data is collected they will analyse it to gain new insights into how transportation systems can be improved to give a higher standard of living to individuals in our society with disabilities.
The Neighbourhood Safety Index
Project partner: Synced LTD
Synced LTD is an application that lets user tag locations with meaningful comments or insights.
User can also see what others have marked in the application. The Government say that this project will: “Produce the first integrated live score of how safe a neighbourhood is.”
YOUR.VU.CITY
Project partners: Vu.City, Pipers Projects Limited, University College London VU.CITY will build 3D maps of urban environments with the aim to boost public interest in the urban development process.
VU.CITY create computer generated interactive 3D maps of urban landscapes. They have established themselves as having one of largest and accurate modellers of UK cities and have done work for UK government agencies in the past such as Newham Council and work on a Canada Water interactive 3D consultation application.
Precision INdoor POsitioning INformation sysTem (PINPOINT)
Project partner: Cartographix LTD
London-based Cartographix wants to build a navigational system for public buildings that people can access via a mobile device. In order to build these maps they will use existing technological infrastructure such as WiFi points and smartphone sensors. The project will require volunteers to walk through the buildings, just like a Google mapper.
Anu Joy from Cartographix said: “The aim of our mapping system is to make life easier for people. And we would not be able to do this work without the funding we are receiving from the government.”
