Royal Borough of Greenwich trusts NEC Smart City Solution

The Royal Borough of Greenwich form part of the Greater London conurbation and is responsible for the delivery of municipal services across the area. It has an extensive regeneration programme and has a rapidly growing population with more than 60,000 new homes planned or under construction, supported by considerable investment in new transport infrastructure. It is home of more than a quarter of a million people – with the population estimated to rise by 30% by 2028. It is known worldwide as the ‘home of time’ and its association with the Greenwich Meridian Line.

It attracts 19 Million visitors each year, principally to the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site and The O2 arena – one of the busiest entertainment venues in the world.

The Royal Borough of Greenwich has also established itself as one of Europe’s leading ‘smart cities’. It is collaborating with Milan and Lisbon on the creation of smart city and community ‘lighthouse’ districts in each city as part of the EU funded Sharing Cities program, and is the location for the Smart Mobility Living Laboratory: London – a UK real world, large scale test bed for the Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

Digital Greenwich and its commercial subsidiary, DG Cities, has been established by the Royal Borough of Greenwich, to develop and take forward its work on smart city innovation and smart mobility. This includes developing innovative smart city technologies and new approaches to support the economic, social and physical regeneration of the borough and reducing pressures on infrastructure, public services and the environment.

The scope of this initiative includes the implementation of the Cloud City Operations Centre, NEC’s cloud-based, smart city management platform, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich as part of the Greenwich Smart City Strategy. This will enable Digital Greenwich to visualize and analyse real-time and historical data from the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors available across the city for monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to a wide range of public services.

Smart city innovation aims to help Greenwich address the challenges of increasing population and visitors, and higher demand for services, while balancing these requirements with financial and resource constraints. For example, tra c congestion leads to increased level of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The use of data analytics and visualization can improve journey planning and alternatives to car use, and thus reduce these problems, improving air quality for local residents and visitors.