Connected

Places Catapult
Strategy //

Connected Places

Connected Places
INTRODUCTION
Cities and towns thrive on their ability to connect people
– to resources, opportunities, ideas and to each other.
The smooth flow of people, goods and services into and
around a place, between them and beyond (by air and sea)
is a vital component of economic success.
Throughout history, the diffusion of innovative
technologies has enabled ever-increasing levels of
connectivity – physically through bridges, aqueducts,
railways and skyscrapers, virtually through internet
connected sensors and contactless payments, and
socially through urban design and civic infrastructure -
delivering in turn scale and productivity. Research from
MIT shows that an urban area which doubles in population
enjoys a 130% boost in productivity.1 As the UK
Government’s Industrial Strategy rightly notes, ‘Place’
is a key foundation of productivity and a driver of
Britain’s future economic success.
However, just as places with high quality, high capacity
connectedness enjoy success, when the quality and
‘bandwidth’ of that connectivity falters – whether
physical, virtual or social – productivity and wellbeing
also suffers.
MARKET OPPORTUNITY
As more and more people globally live, work, play and
learn in urban areas, for many the growing pains of
urbanisation are starting to outweigh the benefits.
Places around the world now suffer from congested
roads, toxic air, creaking public infrastructure and social
isolation. To give just one example, a British study by
Hewlett Packard found that peak hour commuters (road
and rail) experience higher levels of stress than fighter
pilots or riot police facing protestors.2 The time it takes
to detoxify those workers brains from that stress eats
into their productivity for up to an hour after arriving at
work – and weakens their social bonds at the end of the
day too. This work/life pattern, enforced by our inelastic
built environment and overburdened transport networks,
is one contributing reason for why 35% of UK citizens
report they do not feel connected to community - an
epidemic of loneliness ranked as high a risk factor for
mortality as smoking and a further drain on economic
productivity.3
1
Bettencourt & West, ‘A Unified Theory of Urban Living’ (Nature, 2010)
2
Lewis, 2004 – cited in Montgomery, C., Happy City: Transforming Our Lives
Through Urban Design (2013)
3
Ye Luo, Hawkley, Waite & Cacioppo, Loneliness, health and mortality in old
age (2012)
4
Prof Ed Glaeser, Triumph of the City (2011)
1
In the UK and around the world, a new step change in
connectivity is required to reset the balance and upgrade
‘humanity’s greatest invention’ to meet the needs of the
21st century.4
Developing and scaling the products and services that will
enable these upgrades represents a major commercial
opportunity for UK businesses. Whether new mobility
services for people and goods that tackle productivity-
sapping congestion, data-driven digital tools that drive
transformation in the real estate and development sector,
next-generation digital connectivity and devices that
improve the efficiency of public services, or applications
of cutting-edge neuroscience that shape inclusive work
places and public spaces, the opportunities are myriad.
The global market opportunity for firms that develop,
service and sustain our urban settlements and their
hinterlands is already estimated to be worth $500bn and
is expected to double by 2023. The closely related global
markets for connected autonomous transport and new
mobility services are estimated to value £581bn and
£525bn respectively by 2030.5
Moreover, such innovations promise considerable spill-
over benefits to the wider economy – e.g.:
• Optimising the flow of goods between the place(s) of
production, the marketplace, and the place of use would
reduce cost and drive competitiveness (currently 10-
15% of product costs are transport-related);6
• ‘Clean’ mobility solutions that cut emissions and
particulate matter from vehicles (currently 12% of all
PM and 51% of NO2) would deliver significant health
and productivity benefits – already around 1.2bn
working days a year are lost globally due to the negative
impact of air pollution on employee wellbeing
• More agile spatial planning that reduced the time
commuters waste in transit (400 days over a lifetime)7
and the time needed to destress would drive workplace
productivity for all;
• Reducing social isolation through inclusive urban design
and mobility solutions would deliver significant savings
for the National Health Service and local social care
budgets – over 1.4m people say they have missed,
turned down or chosen not to seek medical help because
of transport problems.8
5
 arketsAndMarkets (2017); Frost and Sullivan (2017); Persistence (2017);
M
Radiant (2017); Deloitte (2018)
6
Rodrigue, JR., The Geography of Transport Systems (2017).
7
Total Jobs, Commuter Calculator (2016)
8
Social Exclusion Unit. Making the Connections: The Final Report on Transport and
Social Exclusion (2004).
2
THE NEED FOR PUBLIC INVESTMENT
New and emerging technologies promise to deliver
these benefits and more. However, the complexity of
the overlapping systems which must be navigated to
introduce new products and services in this space and
strict regulatory environments place a constraint on
businesses seeking to exploit such opportunities, while
conservative commissioning cultures and constrained
public budgets similarly limits demand, meaning that
the much-needed upgrades – and their benefits – are
not easily achieved. This is the market failure that the
Connected Places Catapult exists to address.
Our mission is to help British businesses address the
grand challenges of today in order to create Connected
Places, fit for the future.
Research with businesses identified significant barriers
to British firms developing and selling into this market
and taking advantage of the global opportunity. These
overarching barriers are as relevant to the Future of
Mobility solutions as they are to other aspects of the
Industrial Challenges. In particular:
• the poor market co-ordination that hinders the
development of technical standards and models for
integrated and interoperable solutions, including across
transport modes;
• the regulatory environments that stifle innovation and
undermine innovators’ confidence to invest;9
• the fragmentation and silos and assets locally and
regionally, limiting scope for innovative practices, both
for the buyer and the seller and hindering the creation
of value from data;
• the lack of buyer confidence in harnessing new
technologies, in part through poor information
exchange, and procurement practices that
discourage innovation;10
9
 ased on interviews with industry experts (Gartner, Machina Research,
B 11
Frost & Sullivan), 50 large businesses and city council officers.
10
On average it takes two years from first engagement with a local
authority to being paid for a contracted solution (CityMart). For large
businesses, that is an expensive drain on productivity; for SMEs it can be
fatal.
Connected Places
Industry alone cannot solve these demand-side and
policy framework issues. Those transport service
commissioners and place leaders who are looking to take
advantage of innovation are impeded by:
• highly constrained budgets and resources with little
flexibility in financial or intellectual capacity to direct
towards innovation;
• insufficient evidence to support business cases for the
redirection of public funds away from legacy processes,
systems and approaches;
• growing ethical, privacy and security concerns, amplified
by the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR);
• a disconnect between what the market is offering and
what is needed.11
Without intervention, these barriers will continue to
undermine the UK’s ability to develop, demonstrate and
sell the kind of products and services that will succeed
in this global market.
Building on the solid foundations laid by the Transport
Systems and Future Cities Catapults,12 the Connected
Places Catapult is ideally and uniquely placed to
tackle these market failures. We are close enough to
Government to understand the policy objectives but
enjoy greater operational agility and flexibility. We are
more able to leverage industry co-investment. Operating
at the intersection between public and private sectors,
between local government and transport authorities,
we can convene the disparate parts of the market and
translate between them, helping innovators to navigate
the complexity of doing business in this market and
joining up fragmented public sector silos. We unlock
commercial opportunities for firms, socio-economic and
environmental benefits for places, and prosperity for all.
The value of this place expertise in enabling innovation
was highlighted by the Catapult Review Committee in
their 2017 Review of the Network.
NLGN, The Shock of the New (2013), Tomorrow’s Places (2017); LGA,
Encouraging Innovation in Local Government Procurement (2017); Grant
Thornton, Reforging local government (Dec 2015).
12
Both of which underwent organisational renewals under new CEOs during
2018/19 and both successful exited Special Planning in December 2018,
returning straight into Standard Monitoring.
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Connected Places

OUR ROLE For the Connected Places Catapult, this translates into:

As part of the Catapult Network we: • Boosting demand for innovation through investment in
tools, resources and platforms that cultivate confidence
• work with industry, together with regional, national
and capability among buyers, helping them to be
and international partners, to commercialise
intelligent and progressive customers of innovation.
innovation in a way that drives long-term benefit to
the UK economy; • Increasing the supply of proven products and
services that meet market demand through investing
• provide businesses in the sector or technology domain
in technology demonstration, impact assessment,
with access to the appropriate mixture of expertise,
development of interoperable standards and business
skills, facilities and equipment needed for them to
showcasing.
invest in innovation and commercialisation where
these are not readily available due to market failure • Fostering new markets through investing in expanding
or commercial risk; access to data, bringing our multidisciplinary academic
networks and diverse SME ecosystems together in
• work collaboratively with other Catapults, and with the
new and unusual combinations, market analysis and
wider R&D ecosystem, to enable the development of
partnerships with government departments and
innovative solutions to key challenges in the Catapult’s
regulators that leverage the power of the state to
sector; and
dismantle market barriers and open new spaces for
• take an active role in removing industry-wide barriers experimentation.
to innovation and commercialisation where they exist.
PRIORITISING OUR ACTIVITY
As a systems Catapult, our role is to work across
The breadth of potential activity and the size of the market
boundaries and bureaucracies, bringing demand and
opportunity is enormous. We must therefore prioritise our
supply sides together to unlock new markets and drive
efforts and focus on areas where we will have most impact,
growth within complex systems – we do the ‘difficult
proportionate to the size of public funds invested in us.
first thing’ that enables new possibilities and new value.
Our interventions are based on our rich understanding of
We are less concerned with proving that an innovative
place, intelligent mobility and of the market barriers and
technology works than with demonstrating and validating
policy landscape, in particular the Government’s Industrial
how it might be used within a given system – and what
Strategy and devolution agenda.13
issues and implications its use may have.
With 418 councils in the UK and very little
Crucially, despite the huge potential benefits of
standardisation between them, we will focus on those
reforming these markets, regulation-driven inertia and
places most able to embrace innovation and exceptionally
the vested interests of providers who benefit from
well placed to influence the wider market, primarily
maintaining the pointlessly complex and fragmentated
those with new combined authorities, devolved transport
status quo quashes any efforts from within the system
powers, elected mayors and recognised growth corridors.
to resolve its own failings. Bringing sovereign bodies
to the same table to wrestle out shared standards and We will deepen partnerships with bodies like Network
approaches, challenging the grip of vested interests, Rail and Highways England to drive demand for innovation
and doing so with honest neutrality demands public and join up opportunities within regional investments and
investment. highly regulated supply chains.

13
Relevant policies and market drivers are summarised in the Annex.
4
Connected Places

To translate this engagement into commercial
opportunities for industry, we will focus on firms that
have appetite for innovation; existing services or
ambitions for new services aligned with our areas of
focus; assets, products and/or service contracts in our
prioritised geographies; budget for R&D and; willingness
to collaborate.
To amplify our reach and impact, we will deepen our
partnerships with professional membership bodies and
sector networks in the local public sector, industry and
academia, leveraging their domain knowledge, existing
platforms and networks
OUR OBJECTIVES TO 2023
Our headline objective between now and 2023 is to
drive growth in the UK’s connected places market.
Specifically, we will combine the strengths and
capabilities of the founding organisations to:
• Cultivate more informed and capable buyers, in
particular transport authorities and agencies, and
the Tier 1 providers that serve them, and within local
and combined authorities. We will foster greater
capability in both public and private sectors to navigate
common barriers related to public procurement, risk
management and regulation, resulting in more confident
commercial dialogue and an increased volume of
investment in innovation;
• Accelerate the commercialisation of products and
services addressing the Industrial Strategy’s Grand
Challenges, beginning with the Future of Mobility.
We will grow the ecosystem of proven, scalable
solutions available to be commissioned and deployed
by places that deliver new mobility services for people
and goods. Work to cultivate similar ecosystems for
Clean Growth and Ageing Society will follow, with
AI and Data providing enabling technologies across
all our efforts.
• Provoke creative disruption and identify novel
commercial opportunities for connected places
innovations. We will grow the volume of businesses
accessing and exploiting a wider range of place based
and transport data to deliver better connected, higher
performing places. The initial focus of this strand will be
on boosting the use of innovative products and services
in the planning, development and management of growth
corridors, regional developments schemes and other
strategic infrastructure projects.
A GLOBAL OPPORTUNITY
Just as the Connected Places Catapult will build on the
domain strengths of each founding member, so too it
will seek to capitalise on the domestic and international
networks and expertise. FCC has been one of the most
internationally active Catapults in the Network, with
projects in Brazil, China, India and the United Arab
Emirates (to name a few). These projects have been used
to showcase UK businesses and expertise, cultivate
international demand for UK products and services,
and forge beachheads for UK firms to begin operating
internationally. TSC has likewise undertaken international
projects, including in collaboration with FCC. The question
of how the Connected Places Catapult will balance its
activities in the UK with international projects will be a
matter for urgent consideration during early 2019/20,
to be informed by market analysis.

Connected Places
DELIVERING IMPACT
The Connected Places Catapult will deliver all that was
promised by the founding centres and more through
enhanced versions of Programmes developed individually
by FCC and TSC, and the development of wholly new
interventions enabled by the coming together.
Boosting demand for innovation
• Intelligent Customers: Building on both Catapults’
existing expertise and work with the public sector we
will develop new tools and resources to support public
authorities and heavily regulated providers escape
established patterns of thinking and exploit new
technologies, both for the generation of evidence bases
needed to understand and identify their requirements
for innovation, and to tackle their emerging and future
needs once identified.
Accelerating the supply of products and services that
address the Grand Challenges
•F
 uture of Mobility: We will build on TSC’s established
strengths in autonomy, modal modelling and
decarbonised drive trains to accelerate the development
of new mobility services for people and goods (including
freight optimisation), connected and autonomous
transport (including beyond visual line of sight aerial
and marine applications), and Open Data Platforms for
Transport. We will enhance TSC’s expertise with FCC’s
own in active travel, neuroscience and placemaking to
develop an holistic package of innovation support that
enables businesses to test, demonstrate and scale
services. And we will work with regulators and other
public authorities to develop standards, regulation, urban
design and infrastructure on which such services can
integrate, scale and flourish. This will be the major focus
of our Grand Challenges-related activity in our first year.
• Clean Growth: Following on from work to support
business in addressing the Future of Mobility Grand
Challenge, we will undertake new analysis into market
opportunities, needs and barriers related to the
commercialisation of products and services that deliver
Clean Growth. We will focus specifically on interventions
14
 lanTech refers to the growing sub-sector of firms with innovative applications of technology to planning services which grew from FCC’s investment in the Future
P
of Planning. Project Iceberg was an FCC project with Ordnance Survey and the British Geological Society to map subterranean assets.
5
that dismantle the practical barriers to widespread
use of ultra-low emissions vehicles (in particular the
enabling physical and digital infrastructure – building
on the existing cross-Catapult collaboration between
TSC, FCC and Energy Systems); fostering innovation
in last mile logistics (including working with place
leaders, regulators and innovators to create space for
experimentation); and support for the demonstration
and scaling of innovations that tackle emissions related
to ports and airports (in particular those that improve
the ow of people and goods to and from these nodes,
delivering lower emissions and better user experiences).
• Ageing Society: We will also undertake new analysis
into market opportunities, needs and barriers related
to the commercialisation of products and services that
address the Ageing Society Grand Challenge, prioritising
those that support businesses to develop new mobility
services and independent living technologies that make
places and opportunities more accessible and inclusive
for older people; and accelerating the commercial
applications of neuroscience and user research to
create spaces and services that reduce social and
economic exclusion and deliver high quality user
experiences for people of all ages.
Market making and disruption
• Digital Built Environments: As part of our market
making and disruption role, we will expand on FCC’s
successful work upgrading the planning system
(including incubating the PlanTech sector, the Future of
Buildings Information Modelling (BIM) and geospatial
data projects like Project Iceberg),14 incorporating
transport data, planners and providers, as well
as experts in the cyber security and resilience of
connected systems and services to create new market
opportunities for pioneers of integrated planning and
digital built environment services – focussing in the
first instance on helping the market bring forward
products and solutions that support the development,
maintenance and resilience of growth corridors and
the national infrastructure upon which advanced urban
services and transport solutions will be built.
6
• Data: We will combine our advanced capabilities,
data assets and subject matter expertise (e.g. TSC’s
Intelligent Mobility DataHub, FCC’s Tombolo digital
connector)15 as well as relevant academic assets and
other partnerships (including MERIDIAN and the Centre
for Connected Autonomous Vehicles), to provide new
data platforms and comprehensive analysis, modelling
and visualisation capability support to firms. We will
help innovators on both sides of the market navigate
the ethics, governance and trust considerations related
to the generation, sharing and exploitation of data and
algorithms – unlocking an increasing share of the £11bn
potential value of the UK’s geospatial data assets.16
WORKING WITH PARTNERS
To deliver this impact we will invest in deepening our
relationships with industry, academia and the public
sector, including building on the deep academic alliances
established by TSC and platforms like the Highways UK
expo, as well as FCC’s strategic partnerships with the
Society for Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace),
the Public Sector Transformation Academy (PSTA), as
well as establishing new ones like the new All Party
Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Connected Places.
We will maintain and deepen key relationships with
central government departments, in particular the
Department for Transport (DfT), the Ministry for Housing,
Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) and the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
to support the application of innovations in delivering
place-related policy priorities. We will also work with
the Department for International Development (DIT)
and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to
continue creating opportunities to showcase the best and
brightest UK businesses internationally.
We will continue to work closely with Innovate UK and
associated innovation agencies, the Knowledge Transfer
Network (KTN) and Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) to
maximise our collective impact. And we will also continue
to work closely with our fellow Catapults and the new
Catapult Network Development Office, offering our
platforms and expertise in navigating the complexities of
15
An open source piece of software, which allows data specialists to efficiently connect data sets into a common format.
16
Boston Consulting for the Geospatial Commission (2017)
17
The Departure Planning Information project (TSC).
Connected Places
‘place’ to help realise ambitious projects that see a wide
range of technology innovations demonstrated, tested
and scaled by UK businesses.
OUR IMPACT TO DATE
The Connected Places Catapult builds on a foundation
of success. Since 2013, the Future Cities and Transport
Systems Catapults have each worked with businesses,
academics, regulators and place leaders to drive
commercialisation and business growth in their
respective sectors. Notable successes include:
•e
 stablishing globally-recognised innovation hubs in
London and Milton Keynes where businesses, academics,
place leaders and entrepreneurs come together to create
new solutions to problems; generating new knowledge
and market insights in over 150 sector-shaping reports;
• working with over 715 SMEs, more than 120 academics
and facilitated 234 technology demonstrators to trial
innovative products and services;
• demonstrating the world’s first autonomous vehicle on
public space (the LUTZ Pathfinder project), generating
£110m advertising value equivalent and stimulating
an additional £435m investment, raising the profile of
the UK as a global hub for the research, development
and integration of automated and connected vehicles
into society;
• accelerating the use of new technology in city planning
through the drive to digitise processes in the planning
system – something MHCLG officials said “simply could
not [have been] done by government alone”;
• identifying and promoting key areas where the UK can
compete in the emerging global market for Intelligent
Mobility Market, set to be worth £900bn by 2025;
• growing markets for AI and data analytics, including
work with airports to demonstrate how data sharing
can save the sector £42m through reduced fuel burn
and operational efficiencies,17 and work with UK SMEs
and Belfast City Council to develop a new, scalable
revenue collection service now bought by councils
across the region;

Connected Places
• arguing successfully for the commercial benefits of
opening up of geospatial data, leading to the creation
for the Geospatial Commission and the release of
additional Ordnance Survey data under open license;
• spearheading the digital infrastructure and innovation
strand of the Belfast Region City Deal, bringing
industry, academia and local authorities together
around a shared proposal to HM Treasury, resulting
in a £350m investment by the UK Government and an
equal sum from the Northern Ireland Executive;
• creating the Intelligent Mobility Accelerator in
partnership with Wayra UK (part of Telefónica),
which has already led to companies accessing
£8.25m of funding and winning over £1.6m in new
commercial contracts.
OUR OUTCOMES AND IMPACT BY 2023
Looking ahead, the Connected Places Catapult intends
to achieve even greater success than FCC and TSC could
have alone. Through our plans we will deliver economic
impact in the form of:
• new commercial opportunities for technology providers,
and efficiency savings and productivity gains for places
upgrading legacy systems to harness next-generation
connectivity;
• new commercial opportunities for businesses providing
technology solutions to help place leaders and private
providers make more informed investments and service
decisions – working with Metro Mayors and regional
transport authorities to shape strategic economic plans
that deliver prosperous communities; and
• new entrants to the market taking advantage of
entirely new opportunities in areas we have targeted
for disruption – in Housing, Connected Autonomous
Transport and more.
In terms of our own future, following a brief period of
transformation, in which we bring the two founding
organisations together into one new, high-performing
7
Catapult, by 2023 we will have enhanced the capability
of 500 place leaders to buy innovation, through
engagements with over 1,400 businesses and more
than 50 cities. In turn we will have stimulated more
than £25m of additional investment in research
and development.
In doing so, we will have established ourselves as the
‘go to’ partner for government departments, academia,
businesses and other Catapults seeking to bridge silos
and deliver ambitious place-related policies and projects.
And because of that, we will be the best place in the world
to work on innovation for connected places.
Looking ahead to 2030, we will also have helped the
UK’s thriving connected places market to coalesce
under the banner of a recognisable high value sector
to rival the Creative Industries and Financial Services,
delivering productivity and prosperity at home and a
disproportionately large share of global opportunities.
Looking at specific technologies, in the field of intelligent
mobility, by 2023 we will deliver a paradigm shift in
transportation through:
• the first pilot of commercial ‘Beyond Visual Line of
Sight’-based drone services;
• the first land and marine-based automated services
for public transport;
• seamless multi-modal routing for people and goods.
Meanwhile, through our focus on digitising land use
planning, by 2023 we expect to have catalysed a
step change in the delivery of housing and economic
growth through:
• the first machine-readable national planning policy
framework;
• the first real-time updated digital statutory local plan;
and
• the first artificial-intelligence-assisted planning
permission granted within 60 seconds.
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Connected Places

We fully expect that the Connected Places Catapult’s POLICY CONTEXT AND DRIVERS
impact will exceed the combined total for each founding
Both national and international governmental attention
centre, with cost savings from the unification reinvested
is turning to cities, transport and intra-urban transport
in delivering greater impact. By 2023, we will have had a
links. The UK’s Industrial Strategy (2017) emphasised
cumulative direct net impact on the UK economy of
Place as a key foundation of Britain’s future economic
at least £1.5 billion.18
success: places with the right characteristics, assets
DELIVERING TRANSFORMATION AT PACE and resources allow innovation to proliferate and
businesses to grow, yielding prosperous communities.
Work has been undertaken at pace to bring the two
The emerging set of Local Industrial Strategies develop
founding organisations together into a single operating
this logic further by setting out how individual places
company, with a period of Transformation planned for
plan to marshal their existing characteristics, assets and
2019/20 in which the brand, culture and organisational
resources – and invest in new ones – to deliver inclusive
model of the new Catapult will be properly developed
economic growth.19
and established.
The Industrial Strategy also outlined four Grand
By necessity, this strategy is based largely on market
Challenges which places must address in delivering
analysis and intelligence developed independently by
successful growth, but which also represent commercial
FCC and TSC. Nonetheless, significant opportunities
opportunities for innovators. These are the Future of
to enhance the quality and impact of activities already
Mobility, Clean Growth, Ageing Society, and AI and Data.
underway in each organisation by infusing the strengths,
With population and development both concentrated in
technical expertise and networks of the other are already
urban areas, innovation in and around cities promises
readily apparent. Likewise, areas of the market previously
to positively impact each of these challenges, with the
skirted by both founding organisations – for fear of
fourth (AI) playing a vital enabling role.
encroaching on the other’s territory – are now squarely
in play, opening entirely new opportunities for creative The Future of Mobility Grand Challenge is being driven
intervention and impact. by “innovation in engineering, technology and business
models”.20 The productivity-sapping effects of congestion
As part of work to evolve the Connected Places
arising from poorly integrated urban planning and
Catapult swiftly into a single, high-performing operating
transport services has already been noted. Other issues
company, we will undertake refreshed market analysis
arise from new business models and user behaviours in
and industry engagement to validate the areas of focus
one sector which have not seen comparable innovation
and interventions outline here – just as other Catapults
in transport solutions – for example, e-commerce sales
annually update and occasionally revise their forward
on Black Friday put an estimated 82,000 (largely diesel
activities in light of developments in the market and
powered) delivery vans on UK roads.21 The density of
changing need.
urban environment creates huge opportunity for novel
mobility solutions – just as the environmental impact and
generational shift away from personal ownership creates
demand for alternative models. The market for mobility
innovations is not exclusively urban – but the overlap of
this challenge with urban areas is a rich opportunity.

18
Including savings e.g. £1m a year generated by Belfast City Council from 19
BEIS, Local Industrial Strategies Policy Prospectus (Oct 2018)
use of the Rates Identification Tool developed under SBRI with FCC and 20
All quotes: BEIS, Industrial Strategy: The Grand Challenges (May 2018)
Innovate UK. Aligning the FCC and TSC impact models into an integrated 21
The Guardian (November 2017)
impact forecast will be a priority for the new organisation.

Connected Places
The Clean Growth Grand Challenge seeks to “maximise
the advantages for UK industry from the global shift
to... low carbon technologies and the efficient use
of resources”. While universal, the climate and public
health impacts of emissions particularly affect those in
urban areas – for example, city dwellers are developing
chronic conditions such as kidney disease at much faster
rates, and many cities are at increased risk of flooding
and extreme weather events as a result of climate
change.22 Cities and the systems that support them are
also major contributors of the pollution that is driving
these impacts: heating and powering homes, which are
concentrated in urban areas, account for about 30% of
the UK’s total energy budget, and 20% of UK greenhouse
gas emissions,23 while transport contributes 26% of UK
emissions and particulate pollution. With 68% of the
world’s population expected to be urban by 2050,24 the
global effort for sustainability will be won or lost in the
world’s cities. The Ministry for Housing, Communities
and Local Government (MHCLG) has already signalled
a commitment to delivering clean cities, while the
Department for Transport (DfT) has similarly committed
to delivering clean transport. Innovations that help
realise those ambitions, by improving how we develop,
manage and move around cities and their dependent
regions (whether through mobility innovations like
decarbonised drive chains and active travel, innovations
which enable behaviour changes, or innovations in the
built environment like deep retrofit of housing and
electrification of urban infrastructure) represent both a
public good and a significant market opportunity.25
22
 he Lancet, Air pollution and the kidney (October 2017)
T 26
23
IET, Scaling Up Retrofit 2050 (October 2018)
24
United Nations analysis (May 2018)
25
UK Government, Clean Growth Strategy (April 2018)
9
The Ageing Society Grand Challenge seeks to create
“an economy which works for everyone, regardless of
age”. Not all UK cities have younger populations – 19
cities, principally smaller coastal ones, have populations
older than the national average. Even cities with lower
than average age populations have large concentrations
of older people – in 2016, there were 5.4 million people
over 65 living in the UK’s priority urban areas.26 Creating
age-friendly cities which enable people to live well
independently, participate in the economy and connect
to their communities is a significant opportunity for
innovation – with benefits for individuals, local economies
(both in terms of labour force and spending power) and
for public spending (by managing down the need for
expensive health and care services).
Where businesses have the power to deliver solutions
that address these Grand Challenges, shaping and driving
local growth falls largely to the UK’s place leaders, in
particular the new cohort of Metro Mayors who have
devolved responsibility (and appetite) for strategic
economic development and transport planning in new
Combined Authority areas. Dialogue between these new
regional economic groupings and central government
has produced a series of City and City Region Deals,27
which transfer further investment and powers to
the regional leadership (especially for transport and
digital infrastructure). Innovative leadership is also
being shown outside the Combined Authorities, but the
advent of Metro Mayors, led by London, highlights the
potential benefits of integrated planning and delivery
across numerous social and economic sectors, including
employment, health, housing and the environment.
Centre for Cities Data Tool
27
 Future Cities Catapult was instrumental in supporting the Belfast region
develop one such Deal, resulting in £350m of funding for digital and
innovation infrastructure from HM Treasury.
10
Connected Places

Whitehall departments are also investing in growth
aligned to the Grand Challenges. In addition to devolution
policy, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local
Government (MHCLG) is fostering innovation in local
services through investments in digital, data and AI – in
particular the Local Digital initiative, which promotes
and funds standards-based innovation, and the Digital
Land programme, which (along with the Geospatial
Data Commission) has joined FCC in efforts to give the
planning system a much-needed digital upgrade. The
MHCLG agency Homes England is working with the
various tiers of devolved, regional and local authority to
increase house building. Innovative products and services
can help ensure that these new developments are located,
designed and equipped to produce healthy, inclusive, low
carbon communities that augment and enhance existing
towns and cities.
The Department for Transport (DfT), and the major
organisations that act for it (Highways England, Network
Rail and HS2), have identified ‘Boosting economic growth
and opportunity’ as the first of four major objectives.28
This has led to the Transforming Cities Fund – £2.5 billion
of investment in public and sustainable transport to
improve productivity and spread prosperity in some of
the largest English city regions. As Transport for London’s
efficiency gains on the Victoria line have shown however,
better mobility is not always about more hardware;29
the co-ordination and exploitation of transport data is
an emerging opportunity to increase productivity by
reducing friction in the system and for businesses who
can build new products on the back of the data.
Following dialogue with both place leaders and Whitehall
Departments, the Infrastructure Projects Authority
(IPA) has identified £600bn of investment needed in
infrastructure over the next decade. Helping secure
the full potential of this connective tissue represents a
market opportunity for innovators – both in terms of the
data analysis and modelling needed to inform the shape
of the investments (for example along growth corridors
like the OxCamb Arc), and in terms of providing the
technologies that connect, manage and future-proof the
planned infrastructure.
With urbanisation and a reimagining of transport systems
continuing apace globally, the UN has included “making
cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and
sustainable” as one of its 17 Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs). 10% of global GDP is already spent by
cities procuring services.30 Analysis by the Business
and Sustainable Development Commission indicates
that implementing the SDGs represents a commercial
opportunity valued at US$3.7 trillion annually by 2030.31
The Department for International Trade (DIT) and the
cross-Government Prosperity Fund now both have
dedicated Future Cities teams and funding streams to
help British firms export innovative solutions that enable
successful, connected places.

Beyond investments in infrastructure for physical

connectivity, the Department for Digital, Media,
Culture and Sport (DCMS) is leading investment in
next generation digital connectivity – most obviously
the Urban Connected Communities project in the West
Midlands. The Department for Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has also signalled appetite
for other large-scale demonstrators to accelerate the
application of innovative products and services that
address the Grand Challenges.

28
 The others being ‘Building a One Nation Britain’, ‘Improving journeys’, and ‘Safe, secure and sustainable transport’.
29
 Evening Standard, Victoria Line trains now run every 100 seconds (May 2017)
30
Cram, C., Global spend on local procurement, The Guardian (Oct 2012)
31
Business and Sustainable Development Commission, Valuing the SDG Prize in Cities (December 2016)
 Connected Places

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