Kainos, a Belfast-based global provider of digital services and platforms, has been selected by Telensa, a developer of smart streetlighting and smart city applications, as lead partner to build and support the ‘trust platform’ for the Urban Data Project that is being rolled out in Cambridge.
Kainos will work on the City Data Guardian trust platform that will collect and protect data as part of the Urban Data Project (UDP) smart cities initiative, enabling transparency and empowering chief data officers to build public trust and engagement.
The UDP is being delivered by a world-class consortium, including Microsoft, Telensa and Smart Cambridge, with technology from Qualcomm. City Data Guardian is a secure-by-design trust platform that: applies privacy policies, ensures regulatory compliance, and makes data available to improve services and drive future city revenues.
The platform collects, stores, secures, manages and analyses data from Telensa’s Multi-Sensor Pods, which gather and fuse sensor data from devices, including camera and radar imaging, to measure levels of traffic, footfall, pollution and noise. Data processed at the edge is secured and transmitted to the platform, which applies stringent data governance and privacy controls to safeguard citizen data.
Using machine learning and AI, data collected from Telensa’s Multi-Sensor Pods and delivered by the company’s ultra-narrow band Low-Power Wide-Area wireless network, is used to provide a more accurate view of urban areas and how they are used.
Put into practice, this could cut the time and cost involved in traffic surveys by providing live feeds, giving local authorities realistic and accurate traffic data, making them more informed on real-time road network and traffic management issues.
City Data Guardian is built on Microsoft Azure, using Platform as a Service features such as IOT Hub, and Kainos will provide ongoing support as it is rolled out to other cities. Key features of the platform include:
• Secure-by-design trust engine;
•A digital twin;
• Analytics, machine learning and AI;
• Modular architecture;
• Support for open standards;
• Collective intelligence.
“Privacy and trust should be central to any smart city project and cities should retain full control of their data,” explained Jon Lewis, VP for urban data at Telensa. “It was imperative that we partnered with a provider that understood this requirement, had expertise in building secure cloud-based data insight platforms and IoT solutions, and the digital capabilities to build a flexible platform to meet our need. Kainos’ experience in developing on Microsoft Azure, and pedigree in providing digital services to government, made them the perfect fit for this project.”
Russell Sloan, divisional director at Kainos, said, “The platform enables cities to apply technology in a transparent and ethical way, so that citizens can be confident about how their data is being collected and used. Once the Urban Data Project is rolled out to other cities around the world, the collective intelligence gathered will identify trends and patterns that could completely transform how we live.”
