Imagine festival intl innovation 149 research media 00

ANALYSIS

Imagine Festival Exploring intelligent mobility Imagine a future where journeys are fast, seamless, comfortable and green. In mid-June, experts from across the transportation sector converged on Milton Keynes, UK, to do just that at the Imagine Festival. The Transport Systems Catapult (TSC) hosted the 10day event centred on intelligent mobility, and here, International Innovation shares the highlights of the festival’s informational sessions, workshops, debates and roundtable discussions.

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THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL

Throughout the festival, attendees explored the complex relationship between design, end users and intelligent mobility. Experts from across the transportation and city planning sectors provided glimpses of these sectors’ futures, talking about the most successful and innovative ways to move the UK

Transport is about much more than how you get from A to B. It’s also about how much time you get to spend with your children at the end of the working day, or how much money you have left to spend after you’ve taken care of your transport needs. So it’s an intrinsic part of our lives and that’s why it drives such a very emotional response.

Kuldeep Gharatya, Head of Railway Systems at London Underground ??

INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION

TRANSPORT SYSTEMS CATAPULT Transport Systems Catapult hosted the Imagine Festival. Transport Systems Catapult is a centre for technology and innovation that aims to foster intelligent mobility. It catalyses collaboration between manufacturers, customers, operators, legislators and innovators to improve the movement of people and goods around the world.

Pods – electric-powered, autonomous pods that could potentially reach speeds of 24 km per hour will be zooming around the streets of Milton Keynes in 2015. The TSC has commissioned RDM Group to build the pods and Oxford University’s Mobile Robotics Group to supply the navigational system. The collaborators will trial three versions of the vehicle, which is designed to minimise congestion and reduce carbon emissions.

Brains to Business symposium On 16 June, the Imagine Festival tackled the topic of the ‘Valley of Death’ ¬– a so-called gap that good ideas often fall into to die when they are not turned into commercially successful realities. Higher education leaders, innovators and business leaders discussed the Valley in significant detail, sharing stories about past ventures and talking about best practices for building solid bridges between academia and business.

Sentiment mappers event The event explored the benefits the transport industry can derive from social media analysis. The ‘sentiment mapping’ project – which is a collaboration between TSC, the Royal College of Art and the London-based company Commonplace – mines information that travellers post to social media applications and plots their thoughts and emotions on a map in real time. The goal for this project is to create a responsive system that engages travellers in their journeys and enables transportation organisations to respond immediately to the needs of their customers.

TRANSIT TOPIC Passengers travel 800 billion kilometres in the UK every year. That’s approximately equivalent to 1 million round trips to the Moon.

ANALYSIS

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TRANSIT TOPIC In 2013, there was a total length of 10,582,653 km of paved and unpaved road in the EU. If wrapped around the Earth’s circumference, it would circle the planet approximately 260 times

Ambulances – it is predicted that half of the journeys to A&E can be avoided by providing better care at the scene of a medical emergency. Professor Dale Harrow discussed the Royal College of Art’s (RCA) Vehicle Design Programme’s redesign of the ambulance, changing it from a vehicle to an integrated solution designed to meet the needs of patient transport. The new design completely transforms the way paramedics work. Features of the new ambulance include a change in the location of the trolley bed to give paramedics 360 degrees access to the patient, new easy-to-identify packaging for consumable treatments and an overhead monitor to track patients’ vital signs, which is also integrated with the hospital.

People often drop the word ‘Systems’ from our company’s name, but it’s there for a reason, and that’s because a systemsbased approach is fundamental. The key thing with a systems approach is understanding customer needs and what functions you need to deliver.

Transport Systems Catapult’s own Chief Technical Officer Paul Zanelli

Planes – Philip Ellis, Manager of the Departure Planning Information (DPI) programme, discussed its move to install real-time departure information software at up to 22 UK airports. Already in London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports, DPI will provide passengers with more accurate flight information, minimise delays and reduce the amount of time planes spend in holding patterns waiting to land. The team estimates that the programme will result in a £12 million economic benefit for the UK.

Policy futures workshop The Policy Futures workshop opened the festival with an examination of transportation policy and the wide variety of sectors it affects, from healthcare to defence, town planning to sustainability. It encouraged attendees to explore how systems thinking is integrated into policy making and identify ways to positively impact UK quality of life, economic growth and sustainability.

City planning – urban planner Tim Stonor underscored the need for cities to create a successful blend of residential property, shops, restaurants and greenery, using the Champs-Élysées in Paris as an example.

Stonor has been working with spatial technology to measure the amount of connectivity streets have in relation to its particular city. His goal is to enable urban planners to use this information to improve the flow of cities, simultaneously generating fair property prices while reducing crime.

TRANSIT TOPIC The world moves 30 billion tonne km of freight per day

*Transit topics sourced from Transport Systems Catapult, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and International Chamber of Shipping

The data challenge workshop The festival closed on a day dedicated to discussing data. Data experts, academics, SMEs and transportation planners identified major obstacles preventing the industry from intelligently accessing and using data. Such obstacles included data privacy, standardisation and normalisation, resources for effective analysis and the ability to share data openly. The workshop attendees did not solely point out issues with data sharing – they brainstormed solutions. TSC is in the process of collating the ideas generated at the workshop, and it will release them to wider transport and data communities with the goal of using these conversations to accelerate improvements in intelligent mobility.

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