Bristol Brain smart city visualisation technology proposed…
Bristol is aiming to create a 3D-printed large-scale city model that can have real-time data and sophisticated analytics projected onto it, for example, showing real-time pedestrian and traffic flows; the energy use of buildings or even the air quality at different times of the day or night and at different times of year.
The really ambitious part is to make the model into an immersive digital environment that will use virtual and augmented reality and haptic touch technologies to allow people to ‘leap-in’ to the city model. Bristol citizens will be able to experience new developments before they are built and see how they impact on the city’s systems. This will allow different scenarios for future developments to be explored as if they are real, and for the impact on energy, transport, air quality, noise, light and other factors, to be fully understood.
Bristol is well placed to develop a city ‘Brain’ as a large investment has already been made in hardware and software in Bristol is Open to create a city research and development platform.
Bristol can pioneer this approach thanks to its credentials as a high tech and sustainable city, says Stephen Hilton, Director of Bristol City Council’s Bristol Futures team, with two leading universities and businesses at the cutting edge of developing technologies that utilise data, augmented reality, sensors, analytics, visualisation, virtual environments and interactive digital media.
The project was announced at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, and Bristol City Council is now seeking £10-15m investment to build the full model in such a way that it can be openly shared with cities around the world.
… as Bristol is Open boosts partners
Smart city networking testbed Bristol is Open has added two new partners, bringing projects from Rolls Royce and technology licensing firm InterDigital.
As a Project Partner in the UK’s first interactive Data Dome, Rolls Royce will investigate the use of the fully immersive hemispherical display system in the 100-seat facility, for high-end visualisation of its products and associated big data. The first visualisation is of the Trent XWB, the world’s most efficient aero engine.
“Visualising and creating value from a wealth of data is really important to us, and this partnership provides us with a great opportunity to tap into the Bristol and Bath area’s rapidly growing innovative digital media capabilities. It’s also a great opportunity to engage and inspire young people with immersive sound and vision experiences of our products and show them how exciting engineering can be,” said Paul Stein, Chief Scientific Officer at Rolls-Royce.
Housed inside At-Bristol Science Centre’s Planetarium, the Bristol Data Dome is the only projection environment in the world connected to a city-scale high performance network and a high performance computer and is one of the highest definition digital projection environments in the UK today.
“Our world is overwhelmed by data, making a lot of it inaccessible and unintelligible. Visualising data in a shared environment like the Bristol Data Dome enables people to identify new patterns, and jointly examine new ways of seeing the world, the city, and products and services,” said Paul Wilson, Managing Director of Bristol Is Open. “Rolls-Royce has understood this, and been quick to spot the opportunity the Data Dome provides. We’re very pleased to announce this partnership with them, and to exploring similar partnerships with others.”
Mobile technology research and development company InterDigital licenses key patents for wireless systems and has also joined Bristol is Open.
“Bristol Is Open is an exciting initiative with a vision that aligns perfectly with InterDigital’s 5G and IoT focused research and development efforts. Collaboration on this innovative project serves as another positive example of InterDigital’s strong and open innovation model,” said Alan Carlton, Vice President of InterDigital Europe.
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