Citi Logik: planning for tomorrow’s smart cities
Citi Logik is providing its real-time traffic and transport analysis to Hull - and will target other cities with Innovate UK support.
Citi Logik Managing Director, Stephen Leece.
Insights and predictive analytics company, Citi Logik has successfully deployed its advanced analysis tool CitiAnalytics in a UK city - providing a detailed mobile network analysis of road and transport use.
Meeting the challenges of population growth
According to the Office for National Statistics the UK population could reach 70 million by 2029. Government research suggests most of the UK’s future population and economic growth will be concentrated in cities.
Understanding how people move around cities today will help with future infrastructure planning and development for vehicles, walking, cycling and public transport. It can also allow commuters to reach their destinations safely and more efficiently.
Making sense of cities
The CitiAnalytics tool works by using the mobile phone network along with other big data sets to gather anonymised, census-quality information on the movement of people.
Following successful trials with Hull, Citi Logik is now analysing the city’s urban transport systems to spot patterns, record trends and predict future use.
This information can replace traditional roadside surveys, GPS and Wi-Fi data to allow local authorities to more accurately track and predict demands on public infrastructure.
The way people are moving around is changing dramatically
Stephen Leece, Managing Director of Citi Logik, said:
We’ve worked on a wide range of projects over the last 2 years including analysis of car parking and movement of people through railway stations.
What’s very apparent is the way people are moving around urban spaces is changing dramatically. People aren’t commuting in a linear way anymore – they don’t go back in forth in one direction and they avoid commuting at rush hour.
Using the insight CitiAnalytics provides, local authorities will be able to better identify issues and work on solutions. This includes encouraging active travel, which requires the individual to be active or exercising while moving from one destination to another.
Stephen continued:
One thing we’ve found is that in many urban areas the speed of motorised movement is lower than the speed of cycling. If people are encouraged to use active travel we can ease pollution and congestion.
From Heathrow to Hull
Citi Logik has received funding from Innovate UK for multiple development projects.
This includes small-scale grants from Innovate UK and Transport for London in 2011, which led to high-profile contracts to analyse traffic flows around Heathrow and Gatwick airports.
In 2017, a further grant allowed Citi Logik to build its CitiAnalytics platform and test it with customers in a real-world environment. This is where it first worked with Hull, with successful trials seeing the system integrated into the day-to-day workings of the city.
Now, the company has secured an innovation loan, Innovate UK’s pilot programme to help businesses closer to market to commercialise their innovation. Using the innovation loan, Citi Logik will look at how it can scale up and roll out its platform to other cities.
What’s next?
The forthcoming 5G mobile broadband technology should offer many additional capabilites and benefits to UK cities.
A report by Deloitte, commissioned by The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, suggests that it has the potential to offer much quicker and more efficient web services, as well as opening up the possibilities of connected and autonomous vehicles.
For Citi Logik, the arrival of 5G means data will be even more accurate and sharper - making its tool even more appealing for city planners to effectively shape their urban environments based on the real-time movement of those within it.
Last updated 10 September 2018