A smart city uses digital technologies and data-sharing to drive sustainable economic development, reduce costs and make it an attractive place to live, work and visit. As part of the Smart Oxford Project Board, Nominet is exploring how technology may help solve some of Oxford’s own unique challenges, from congestion and connectivity to attracting new investment in the city. Nominet has reviewed other smart city programmes around the world and looked at what’s already going on in Oxford and at how the city might begin to differentiate itself in this space in the future.
“The internet is rapidly moving from mainly connecting humans to connecting machines through the Internet of Things (IoT). This has the potential to support many new and exciting projects that use the internet for good and we want to play a part in defining and shaping it, building on our existing DNS expertise. Globally, there is a lot of exciting work going on in this new field and we’re delighted to be looking at how technology might improve our home city of Oxford,” said Russell Haworth, CEO, Nominet.
“From our initial research, it’s clear that Oxford already has a lot of the characteristics that mark out a smart city,” comments Adam Leach, Director of Research and Development, Nominet. “It’s an active hub of existing smart city-style initiatives from local companies and organisations, including our own TV white space project powering the Oxford Flood Network. Businesses are already naturally exploring initiatives in this area and it’s great to see Oxford’s local authorities and universities taking a forward-thinking and active lead in bringing all of these efforts together to give the city a technological and economic boost.”
Current Oxford initiatives that reflect smart city thinking include the MobOx transport study, Oxford Flood Network, Oxford Super Connected City Project, UrbanData2Decide Project, and OxFutures. The city has many businesses and two universities at the forefront of research and innovation and the recently agreed City Deal and Growth Deal will see major investment in infrastructure and innovation centres.