Birmingham’s smart city roadmap

Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Smart City Commission have come together to create a Roadmap to a Smarter Birmingham. The Roadmap is a set of 39 actions that aim to influence the city’ s approach to creating a sustainable and better future for its citizens  by responding to challenges such as unemployment, the skills gap, health inequalities, effective mobility and carbon reduction targets.It represents a collective ambition by city stakeholders to deliver real change by developing intelligent and integrated services through the use of digital technologies, data and open collaboration, driven by the citizens and communities that are core to the city’ s future growth.

 To achieve this ambition, the city council is working in partnership with many other organizations in Birmingham to create a smart city ‘˜eco-system’ .

There are three intrinsically linked themes that underpin the roadmap’ s proposed actions:

• Technology & Place  covers actions that seek to improve the city’ s   broadband (both fixed,   wireless and ultrafast) provision and access to data services across the city; embed principles of digital infrastructure and connectivity into city planning to future proof residential and commercial developments. There will be a concerted push to share and publish as much public open data as possible notably through an open data portal for SMEs to access as well as make it easy for citizens to contribute their own data.
• People  actions centre on ensuring citizens ‘“ pupils through to adults, job seekers, employers, carers and entrepreneurs, have the skills and capabilities to thrive in a connected, online world to support health and wellbeing and job prospects, both now and into the future for a smart, inclusive economy. Targeted actions are supporting SME innovation through access to data, a change to procurement rules and competitions.
• Finally the  Economy  actions centre on the areas of health and wellbeing, ICT and energy efficiency and mobility. It proposes projects for example that will support better care coordination, planning and independence; make use of IT to improve building energy management and control; enhance transport information and facilities by using sensor technology and data to improve traffic flows and to make it easier to find places to park as well as create a simple single payment system for public transport travel across Birmingham and the region.

Source: Birmingham smart city,  The Roadmap to a Smarter Birmingham