Technology

Posted on October 14, 2019 by staff

Hull becomes first UK city to build its own OS

Technology

The city of Hull will become the first in the UK to benefit from its own purpose-built Smart City Operating System (OS).

Following news last week that the city has become the first in the UK where everyone can get full fibre broadband, its new ‘CityOS’ platform provided by Connexin, enables Hull to become a programmable city.

It does so by connecting council services and centralising information that can be analysed and used to make better decisions about how to improve life in the area.

Following the success of being crowned the UK City of Culture 2017, Hull City Council has forged a partnership with Connexin to deliver its plans to make Hull a world-leading Smart City.

The Smart City OS will allow Hull City Council to add and connect new smart, sustainable technology solutions.

Described as the “Operating System of a Smart City” Hull City Council will use Connexin’s CityOS platform to integrate, view, manage and respond to information from a range of council services, sensors and systems, using a single intelligent dashboard.

Information from current and future data producing deployments, such as smart lighting, parking, traffic, waste management and Wi-Fi deployments, are to be integrated into the “single pane of glass” software platform.

Councillor Daren Hale, Deputy Leader of Hull City Council said: “Developing Hull as a Smart City will give us the opportunity to work with public and private sector partners to deliver real benefits to communities, businesses and visitors to Hull.

The project will involve technological solutions to enhance data-sharing and decision-making, which will help it to deliver more effective services, including traffic management and health and social care.

The system is designed to pull together information that currently sits within separate council computer systems to enable city wide management of the city’s public assets in real time.

“As the project develops, it will create a demand for new digitally skilled workforce in the city, so we will need to invest in skills and training for younger generations so they are prepared for the new types of jobs that will be created in the digital sector,” he said.

Furqan Alamgir, Founder and CEO of Connexin added: “We’re thrilled to be partnering up with our home city and are committed to making Hull a world-leading Smart City to foster economic development and enhance many aspects of liveability, workability and sustainability.

“Our platform will enable Hull to become a “programmable city” and move from outdated siloed service driven technologies to a central platform to improve service delivery, reduce costs and to make the most of new technologies such as IoT, AI and machine learning algorithms.”

The new software also opens the door for several new projects and developments, said Connexin.

Much of the information brought together will become available, on an open platform, for the public to use to drive new ideas and solutions to directly benefit the local economy.

Additionally, with open APIs, local and global independent software vendors and city application developers can plug into the management infrastructure and provide public service capabilities.