As Land Mobile readers will recall, last year we ran a feature article investigating the state of play when it comes to the progress of ‘smart cities’ across the UK. The conclusions reached in the piece were not necessarily completely positive, with the author suggesting that UK cities have “some way to go” before they can be regarded as truly ‘intelligent’ spaces.
Following that article – and by way of providing some good news – we published another piece on the same subject, but this time focusing on a smart city success story. This took the form of an interview with neutral host provider BAI, which has been working closely with Sunderland Council to provide connectivity across the city.
With that in mind, we are going to follow up on the follow-up, with a focus on the council itself. Whereas BAI mainly discussed the technology, however, Sunderland City Council’s Liz St Louis focuses on the variety of use-cases actually driving the rollout. She also goes into detail about the origins of the project itself, emphasising its importance, not just from a societal perspective but also to the local business environment.
Multi-part offer
Discussing the origins of Sunderland’s smart city project, St Louis says: “We started our journey at the beginning of 2019, having developed a plan in conjunction with all of our partners across the city. That is, by 2030, Sunderland will be a connected – which is a key term in this – international city with opportunities for all. “
Those key partners included health and education, as well as local businesses, social housing providers, Sunderland Football Club and the university. The point of that consultation was to gauge the appetite for the project, and the answer we got back was an overwhelming yes.”
Liz St Louis CV | |
| Liz St Louis is the director for smart cities at Sunderland City Council. Possessing over 30 years of experience, she has driven transformation programmes and digital/data initiatives throughout her career. She has a passion for person-centred user design, and ensuring that digital and data enable transformational change, making a “real and measurable diff erence”. Leading the delivery of the smart city programme for Sunderland, St Louis is responsible for driving forward city-wide investment in nextgeneration digital infrastructure and use-cases. |
According to St Louis, at one point during the process, these partners came together at a day and a half-day workshop in the city, facilitated by Nokia Bell Labs. The council agreed to lead the work as discussed at the meeting, in turn forming what St Louis refers to as a “small programme management office”.
Continuing the story, St Louis says: “We developed the digital strategy and our smart city model, which we took to full cabinet in December of 2019. In the first instance, that was really about ubiquitous connectivity – fibre in the ground, wireless in the air – across the whole of Sunderland. “
At the same time, we also wanted to develop a whole range of digital and data solutions, which we believed could massively benefit the city, including residents, businesses and visitors as well. For us, the smart city project has always been about both economic and social good.” Elaborating on the various key drivers for the project, St Louis says that the idea was to use the new digital capability to help “deal with all of the underlying challenges we face”.
That naturally included issues around health and education, but also making sure that “noone and nowhere” would be left behind in terms of access to connectivity itself. The latter subsequently became a kind of informal motto for the project.
Following this, the council embarked on ‘surveillance’ of the marketplace, during which it talked to around 45 operators. The contract to provide the underlying wide area network (WAN) was subsequently awarded to CityFibre, which agreed to invest over £65m to provide gigabit-capable connectivity to 95 per cent of premises across the city.
Other companies involved in the connectivity piece, meanwhile, are Virgin Media and Netomia. The latter of which describes itself as working “at the intersection of creativity and technology, transforming ideas into impactful products and services”.
The final piece of the equation came after the council was awarded around £4.5m by the then Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government for “physical and digital infrastructure” within the city centre. It was at this point that the aforementioned BAI was contracted as a long-term strategic partner to help design, build and manage what St Louis refers to as “a network of networks”.
Liz St Louis - Tech I Can't Live Without | |
| “I couldn’t live without my Tesla. It’s not just a driving experience but a driving extravaganza, with everything from the autopilot to the karaoke features. The real beauty though is its simplicity, and the functions that make life so much easier. The key phone function, for instance, meaning that losing car keys is a thing of the past. The Tesla Supercharger network also makes journey planning and charging options far easier. |
Discussing progress up until this point, she says: “The first deliverables have been concerned with getting live networks in. We now have LoRaWAN across the whole 153 square kilometres of the city. We’ve got our first sensor network running across that as well, including 30 air quality sensors, alongside 72 trac and motion sensors.”
At the time of the interview, St Louis said the council was also about to go live with road temperature sensors in order to support the winter gritting effort. Smart rain buckets will likewise support flood management. At the same time, we’ve also launched a very small ultrafast Wi-Fi service for our residents in the city centre, as well as at Roker along the seafront. We’re planning to massively expand this offering as well.
“To go with that, we’re building a Wi-Fi messaging platform, linked to a city-wide app, enabling people who come into that footprint to connect with us if they want to. We’ll be able to send them offers and discounts, as well as public safety messages. In time, they’ll be able to link into our sensor networks, for instance if they’re interested in receiving alerts about air quality. Finally, we’re also putting in place a private 5G network in the city centre and looking into a number of use-cases in relation to that. Some of those are ‘immersive’ events, for instance when the Christmas lights are switched on. We also want to look at the possibilities of ‘next generation’ CCTV, particularly around public safety.”
As touched on above, there were two core aspects informing the council’s decision to pursue its smart city project with the rigour and enthusiasm it has displayed so far. The first is the societal benefit, exemplifi ed by the health and social care piece, as well as environmental monitoring. The second is potential benefit to local businesses.
Going into greater detail about the former, St Louis says: “The sensors I mentioned earlier have started to give us some really good information, and we’ve architected a smart city data platform to help us [process and use that information]. “We’re just going live with another 12 buildings where we’re going to be putting sensors in, linking to the building management system. We want to use that valuable data to support energy efficiency, lowering costs, but also fitting in with our long-term decarbonisation plans as well. And all of that running across the LoRaWAN network.”
From the business perspective, meanwhile, the benefi ts of the project can be broken down into three parts. The fi rst part is helping businesses develop technology which may ultimately be helpful to them. This is exemplified by the work being carried out around truck automation involving the North East Automotive Association, and manufacturing plants in the city. At the same time, its first 5G IoT accelerator has also been concluded by the council in order to attract tech start-ups with a view to them setting up in Sunderland.
The second part is the opportunity provided by the project to use local suppliers in relation to network buildout, applications and so on. And fi nally, there is the existence of the network itself as incentive to visit – and indeed invest in – the city. “The driver behind this project couldn’t have been purely societal,” says St Louis. “Supporting our local economy is also incredibly important to us, and through all of our procurements, we always have a weighting around that. “We’re always opening opportunities for local suppliers, and we’ve got a number of established contractors who know the patch. BAI has embraced working with contractors really well.”
Ambitions
As mentioned, the initial idea to focus on Sunderland City Council was to provide some positive news following the initial Land Mobile smart city article which appeared last year. Given the conclusions drawn in the latter, you have to wonder what the difference might be between Sunderland and other, perhaps less engaged, UK local authorities. Is it simply their lack of ambition, or is it something more profound than that?
St Louis says: “Obviously I can’t speak for other councils, but our chief executive is very passionate about digital and truly understands the transformational power of it. In our organisation, it’s every director’s responsibility to drive digital in their own areas and I work really closely with all of my counterparts across the council. We’ve got very active work streams with all of our health and social care colleagues, our environmental colleagues and so on. They’re all around the table.”
Summing up the driver for the project, she continues: “Fundamentally, the council and its partners just saw an overwhelming need. We were trying different use-cases and always coming unstuck because of a lack of connectivity. For instance, we’d been trying to put assistive technology in people’s homes and having to install mobile routers with SIM cards just to get the data back.” If what St Louis says is true,
Sunderland City Council’s effort to not only provide but also exploit (and even monetise) digital connectivity could be considered a model of best practice. While maybe not a one-size-fi ts-all strategy for all local authorities, it should certainly provide both inspiration and food for thought.
