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Indoor Mapping Project Gets Gov Funding

29 April 2019
 

Projects to highlight the safest roads for cyclists to use, create a database of all the UK’s trees and launch an indoor mapping system to help people find their way around public buildings, are to be backed by government funding.

Ten schemes from across the UK have won the money to look at new ways of using location-based data to help people in their everyday lives.

 

Competition

In November 2018, the Minister for Implementation, Oliver Dowden, announced a £1.5 million competition. Among the 10 winners are schemes including:

  • Communitree - a project to collect data on trees from across the UK to create a publicly accessible database.

  • RIDE - a London-based project to help cyclists find the safest routes around cities.

  • PINPOINT - a project to create an indoor mapping system to help people find their way around complex public buildings, such as hospitals and universities.

Dowden recently said: "We are investing in location-based data technology to improve public services and the way people experience them."

 

Cartographix

London based Cartographix is one of the organisations which have been awarded funding through the crowdsourcing competition, which was led by the government’s Geospatial Commission in partnership with Innovate UK. By using existing infrastructure, such as Wi-Fi hotspot locations and smartphone sensors, the programmers at Cartographix hope to create a sat-nav-style system for people to use as they walk around public buildings. Organisations would volunteer to have their buildings included on the system and the maps would be made available through existing phone apps.

 

Not spots

Also receiving funding are projects to highlight mobile phone signal blackspots, help tackle travel problems experienced by disabled people and boost public understanding of the planning system.

The projects will be worked on by organisations across the UK and see research carried out by University College London, the University of Warwick, the University of Exeter and the Open University.

 

A full list of all the winners of the competition can be found below:

 

Communitree

Project partners: Forest Research, Open University, Treework Services Limited. This project will develop the largest and highest quality urban tree map in the world for use by business, government and other research needs.

 

Your.Vu.City

Project partners: Vu.City, Pipers Projects Limited, University College London, Vu.City will engage the public with the planning process to improve the understanding of the built environment.

 

Crowd Blackspot Intelligence for 5G Rollout

Project partners: Ranplan Wireless Network Design, University of Warwick. This project will look at crowdsourcing service complaints to help guide 5G rollout for rural and urban areas.

 

Crowdsouring for a Digital Geospatial Joint Strategic Needs Assessment

Project partners: City Science Corporation Limited, University of Exeter. Relevant databases will be brought together to enable members of the public to take an active role in health outcomes, by crowdsourcing data such as Sat-Nav, to enable practitioners to improve targeting of resources and the health of the nation.

 

Precision INdoor POsitioning INformation sysTem (PINPOINT)

Project partner: Cartographix LTD. This project will use WiFi networks and smartphone sensors to help better indoor navigation of public buildings.

 

StreetFocus

Project partners: Cyclestreets, Planit. Communities will be able to automatically identify areas that need improvements to street infrastructure.

 

Coreo

Project partner: Natural Apptitude. This platform will enable anyone to build and run geospatial citizen science projects to improve collection, management and maintenance of geospatial data.

 

Routing Innovation through Data Engineering (RIDE)

Project partner: Beeline. RIDE will develop route optimisation to increase cyclist safety and uptake.

 

Generating crowdsourcing geospatial data

Project partner: Transreport Limited. This project will undertake research to understand the accessibility issues for transportation and the user experience for a wide range of disabilities, and how the data collected can be used to improve the service.

 

The Neighbourhood safety index

Project partner: Synced LTD. This will produce the first integrated live score of how safe a neighbourhood is.

Picture: Ten schemes from across the UK have won the money to look at new ways of using location-based data to help people in their everyday lives.

Article written by Brian Shillibeer | Published 29 April 2019

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