Bristol Is Open - NEC partnership aims to develop the open programmable city

NEC Corporation has signed a long-term partnership agreement with Bristol Is Open, a smart city initiative in the UK and a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol. It aims to create the world’s first open, programmable city to support the creation of innovative new smart services for people, business and academia. It intends to pave the way for improvements in a wide range of services, including traffic congestion, waste management, entertainment, e-democracy, and energy
February 10, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
1068 NEC Corporation has signed a long-term partnership agreement with Bristol Is Open, a smart city initiative in the UK and a joint venture between Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol.

It aims to create the world’s first open, programmable city to support the creation of innovative new smart services for people, business and academia. It intends to pave the way for improvements in a wide range of services, including traffic congestion, waste management, entertainment, e-democracy, and energy supply.

The partnership helps NEC to demonstrate new approaches to pervasive digital connectivity at city-scale, combined with its aim to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow. It helps Bristol Is Open to further its goal of creating the world’s first open programmable city with a city-wide digital fabric that includes fibre in the ground, an experimental wireless mile, and a radio frequency (RF) mesh that covers the vast majority of the city.

NEC, Bristol Is Open and Bristol City Council are part of the €25m Replicate Lighthouse City consortium, alongside San Sebastián and Florence. The consortium will create integrated smart city solutions to tackle urban problems such as traffic congestion, poor air quality and unsustainable energy use. The consortium has received funding as part of the Smart Cities and Communities funding call, through EU’s Horizon 2020 innovation programme.

NEC has been supplying Bristol Is Open with advanced IT and communications technologies, including software-defined networking (SDN) compatible switches, LTE small cells and iPASOLINK ultra-compact microwave systems, helping them to build the smart city test bed platform.

The UK’s Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey said: "Bristol Is Open is one of the UK’s flagship digital smart city projects, led by the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council and part of the Government's super-connected cities programme. It's great to see NEC partner with Bristol Is Open, a collaboration that will help bring even more innovative technology and smarter services to Bristol residents and businesses."

Related Content

  • January 20, 2014
    UK set to lead the way for smart cities
    Government, cities, businesses and universities are joining forces to make sure the UK is leading the global race to develop smarter cities. A new forum led by government, will see local authorities and businesses working together to ensure that growth opportunities are not missed in a market estimated to be worth more than US$400 billion globally by 2020. The Smart Cities Forum, co-chaired by Universities and Science Minister David Willetts and Cities Minister Greg Clark, will develop plans to support t
    Read More
  • April 19, 2017
    UK city trials 3D mapping to aid services management and autonomous vehicles
    The UK’s Oxford City Council has launched a street mapping trial project which it hopes could transform how manages its services across the city and pave the way for the development of autonomous vehicles. As part of the Smart Oxford project, the trial by the council and the University of Oxford’s Robotics Institute (ORI) will see sensors attached to a city council street cleaner in the city centre to create 3D maps. At the same time, the research team at the ORI is exploring data such as road and pavement
    Read More
  • October 28, 2021
    Cost Benefit: Don’t waste your energy
    There are ways that we can harvest power from the world’s roads – without necessarily building new infrastructure. David Crawford investigates some of these new approaches
    Read More
  • December 3, 2018
    EVs & smart cities: Tritium keeps things moving
    Electric vehicles are widely expected to play a major role in the smarter, cleaner cities of the future. Paul Sernia explains why – and looks at the place of ultra-rapid chargers as part of a versatile public infrastructure Electric vehicles (EVs) are widely expected to play a major role in the smarter, cleaner cities of the future. With no dirty tailpipe, EVs can help improve the polluted air of inner cities. And when deployed as widely shared assets – through car clubs, ride-sharing services and taxi
    Read More

Highlighted Content