If you’ve ever had the pleasure of taking an approximately $125 cab ride from London’s Heathrow Airport to the Canary Wharf area, your drive from one side of the metropolis to the other will likely serve as a reminder of how traffic congestion impacts overall transportation networks and mobility. To address this in London, a consortium of local leaders have established oneTransport with the goal of bringing the internet of things (IoT) to bear.
Stakeholders include Arup, Buckinghamshire County Council, Clearview Intelligence, Hertfordshire County Council, Highways England, Imperial College London, Northamptonshire County Council, Oxfordshire County Council, Traak Systems, Worldsensing and InterDigital Europe. InterDigital is a research and development focused firm that focuses on mobile technologies.
A major focus of oneTransport is the Transport Data Initiative described by the group has having a threefold goal:
- Encourage collaboration between authorities in terms of co-working and information sharing;
- Fostering exchange between transport authorities and technology specialists;
- And “help authorities to develop innovative solutions to transport challenges.”
In terms of leveraging the IoT, InterDigital is providing its oneM2M standards-based platform to support smarter mobility. The platform, oneMPOWER, can address key transportation-related use cases including data aggregation, predictive analytics, integration of sensors from multiple vendors, and support for customized mobile applications.
London, a global hotspot, as well as major intercontinental transportation hub, has numerous smart city-type initiatives at work. In fact, the city was ranked No. 3 in Juniper Research’s 2016 global ranking of smart cities. Singapore was named the top smart city in the world.
“It was found that Singapore is a world leader in applying smart mobility policies and technology. Meanwhile, the city’s fixed and cellular broadband services, city apps and strong open data policy led to it taking the top spot for 2016,” said Juniper Research. Barcelona got the No. 2 position, showing particular strengths in energy and sustainability policies. London, was followed by San Francisco and Oslo, Norway.
