Summary

The Smart Cambridge programme explores how data and technology can improve the lives of people in the Greater Cambridge area.

Smart Cambridge supports and enables the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) to take advantage of the opportunities provided by technology. The Smart team help to ensure that our investments and the legacy we leave behind are appropriately future focused by considering existing and emerging technologies.

Local councils, technology businesses, university researchers and other organisation are working with the Smart Cambridge workstream to find smart ways to tackle city challenges like transport and air quality.

The programme is supported by Cambridgeshire County Council's Connecting Cambridgeshire programme. Connecting Cambridgeshire is improving the county’s digital infrastructure with better broadband, free public Wifi and wider mobile coverage. This will enable more flexible working and help reduce traffic congestion.

Themes

The work of the Smart Cambridge team is focused around five key themes, namely to:

  • Use data and technology to support a shift from private car usage to sustainable forms of transport.
  • Use data and technology to improve the management of the highway network.
  • Improve the range and quality of data available to GCP, and explore innovations to help GCP and its partners make best use of the data available
  • Develop strategies and approaches to ensure that new communities take advantage of data and technology to promote sustainability
  • Keep GCP abreast of external developments and potential collaborations to advance towards GCP’s objectives

How we work

The Smart Cambridge team works in a variety of different ways for example:

  • Observing and engaging with developments in the market and developments in other organisations to be able to provide thought leadership to GCP. Catalysing and supporting innovation by engagement with the commercial markets and other partners
  • Carrying out trials and evaluations, and using the learnings to feed into existing or future GCP projects.
  • Bidding for external funding where there is clear alignment to GCP’s objectives
  • Leading projects and workstreams on behalf of GCP where they have a strong technology component

Key Projects

Find out more about the work we’re involved with by clicking on the project pages below for more information on the Smart pages of the Connecting Cambridgeshire website.

Next Steps

Smart Cambridge is paving the way for ground-breaking research to support the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s aims to improve the transport infrastructure in and around the city.

As agreed at the Executive Board in December 2020, the wider work of the programme will cover the following items over the next four years:

  • Better travel and transport information for journeys to support the development of travel hubs.
  • Smarter signalling.
  • Embedding smart solutions into new and existing communities.
  • Future transport initiatives including driverless vehicles.
  • Measuring traveller behaviour change in response to new schemes.

The Smart Cambridge programme is working with a wide range of cutting edge tech businesses and is keen to collaborate with anyone who can contribute.

Publications

Smart Cambridge publishes reports and studies on a range of work. The latest of these include:

  • A joint study with the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) to investigate how people feel about the collection and use of data to support a Digital Twin type model.
  • An Autonomous Vehicle strategy developed by Professor John Miles of the University of Cambridge. It investigate the barriers and opportunities related to using autonomous vehicles alongside the current public transport system around Cambridge.
  • Topic papers developed by the Smart team to encourage the use of smart solutions in new communities (such as North East Cambridge) as early as possible. Digital Infrastructure, Environmental Monitoring and Future Mobility.

Further information, reports and studies are available on the Connecting Cambridgeshire website Smart programme pages.