Feasibility Study for UK Large Scale Commercial Urban Technology Test Area

Tender description

The Catapult has a requirement for a feasibility study for designing, building and operating a commercially viable large scale urban technology test area. The output will be a feasibility report and summary paper for development into an outline business case which can be used to seek further funding from public and private investors should the Catapult choose. There is strong interest from government, industry and academia for the Future Cities Catapult to convene a partnership to jointly develop a new, large-scale, urban technology test area that enables a broad range of smart city and urban technology products and services to be trialled in situ in the urban environment. The location of the facility will encompass a range of urban functions (transport, logistics, retail, media, industrial, residential) to maximise the potential users and use cases that can be trailed at the city scale. The partnership would link universities with a large number of industrial players, including end-user industries of technologies such as logistics, supermarkets, retailers, media, transport and other industries. A key characteristic of this test area is that it would aim to commercially viable over its lifetime and that the investors would see repayment of their initial funding over the course of the project. It will aim to be a world-leading test facility and urban ICT network that combines civil and digital infrastructures in innovative new forms a creates a robust platform upon which offers can be built. Building on the fact that digital and civil infrastructures can no longer be treated separately, the test area will specialise in a range of ICT technologies that are particularly important to enabling smart city and urban technology projects (such as autonomous systems) to be trailed and de-risked in situ. The test area will provide the network performance required for the deployment of multiple new technologies (e.g. advanced logistics, autonomous vehicles, smart grids) so they can be monitored at scale, in-situ, in real-time and in combination, to establish evidence of performance-in-use and the economics of cities in the digital era. It is envisaged this will unlock further investment as the benefits of urban technology are quantified and technology risk lowered as well as provide an ample test bed upon which companies large and small will be able to prove compliance to a variety of standards. The capabilities of the test area and mix of technologies being be unlike anything else attempted in Europe – and possibly globally - at this time; placing the UK in a global leadership position and giving the Future Cities Catapult profile as the strategic partner for smart cities and urban technology in the UK.