A revolution beneath the streets

It's not often that Bristol City Council can be called visionary, but the purchase nearly 20 years ago of an old TV cable network, was a move which has paved the way for a digital revolution in Bristol and could help shape the future of cities across the world.

In an anonymous room at Bristol University dozens of the world's best computer scientists, programmers and network specialists have spent the past 15 years creating Bristol is Open.

But what exactly is it?

Bristol is Open is a huge computer project which will use the city as a test bed for programming ideas which, in the future, could help run Bristol more efficiently and effectively.

The key to the system is the cable network which runs underneath the city between the university, Temple Meads, At-Bristol and the Watershed.

In a joint venture between Bristol University and Bristol City Council the old cables have been upgraded to a super-fast fibre optic network. These cables emerge at a university building on Park Row where they are plugged into a 'mother' computer controlling a City Operating System.

Dimitra Simeonidou, is Professor of High Performance Networks at Bristol University and the architect of Bristol is Open. "We are creating the internet of the future here in Bristol," she says.

This research is only possible because of the enormous data capacity the cables running under our city will provide. 

Currently the most connected country in the world is South Korea where citizens can buy 1GB of data. Eventually Bristol is Open will give each person in the city access to 30GB of data and this opens up a world of possibilities.

This huge data capacity allows the whole city to be used as a programming experiment – ideas which could help run Bristol more effectively will be researched and developed over the coming years.

So far so (relatively) simple, but this project is so much more than better WiFi and data network. Around 1,500 humble lamp posts across the city have also been hooked up to the system creating a "mesh of connectivity" across the city.

In layman's terms these sensors on these lampposts will be capable of sending back huge amounts of information to the City Operating System. Everything from temperature and air quality, traffic management will be monitored and, as the project progress, more ambitious uses of the network will be tested, including helping to control a driverless car on the streets of Bristol.

These lamp post sensors mean the possibilities of Bristol is Open are almost limitless. 

Among the many projects which will be developed are systems allowing ambulance crews to live stream information from the scene of an accident to hospitals, sensors in the homes of the elderly which will help them stay independent for longer and scientifically monitoring Bristol's bird population using an app which recognises and counts bird song.

However, that is in the future says managing director of Bristol is Open Paul Wilson: "When we turn it on over the summer it will sense normal things like temperature, noise, light.

"One very practical thing is if the temperature goes below three degrees you have to grit the roads – we will be able to identify where exactly in the city you need to grit."

A prosaic start perhaps, but as the mesh network gathers enormous amounts of data about Bristol and how we live in it, the City Operating System will help determine ways to run the city systems more effectively and efficiently in the future.

With this new operating system Simeonidou says they are able to create a programmable city which will help the council provide the right services in the right places: "We recognise that one service doesn't fit all. For instance Knowle West as a community is very different to a community in Clifton. How you can design a city that could respond to the needs of different communities of the different areas? 

"In Aztec West you have businesses with very different needs to businesses in the centre where you have all the restaurants and recreation businesses - how do we provide services to match their needs?"

But how do you use all this information?

Part of the Bristol is Open network is the new At-Bristol 3D space show which is much more than just an experience for schoolchildren. It will become an enormous data visualisation canvas which can interpret the information flowing back from the lampposts and show in real-time how Bristol is working.

"Imagine doing that with huge amounts of data and imagine doing that in an immersive environment like this dome and doing it in 3D." Phil Winfield

Chief executive of At-Bristol Phil Winfield said their role is to make the data accessible to all: "Data Visualisation is all about making pictures out of data to make data easier to understand. A table of numbers is really difficult to understand it but, if you plot it as a graph or pie chart, immediately it becomes obvious." 

We may be some way off directly benefiting from this cutting edge technology but what is learnt during this research and development phase in Bristol, could ultimately go on to shape the way we live in cities of the future across the world.

And, as the world population increases and more people live in cities, it is crucial that we get urban living working as efficiently as possible as to help cities cope with traffic, pollution, energy, waste and ageing populations.

Paul Wilson says this pressure to improve the way cities are run is the motivation for Bristol is Open: "Technology has got to a place where it allows us to use it to the benefit of the rest of us...The university is looking at how we do this and the council are looking into why would you do this.

“The dynamic tension between how and why is right at the core of Bristol is Open. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it but, because we can do it, how do we make it useful? That's what we are all about."

The Bristol is Open team are looking at some big questions about our future – not least the issue of data privacy and security.

Paul Wilson says the debate needs to catch up with the technology: "Currently the laws don't really cater for all of this and they are not designed for it."

These are questions which civil liberties groups want answered. A spokeswoman for Liberty said they would expect the debate to include questions on where the data collected will come from and will it be individuals' personal data, whether those people will be consulted before their data is collected and how it will be stored and shared “which would be the area that would concern us from a civil liberties point of view”.

While the Big Brother analogy is inevitable Dimitra Simeonidou say Bristol is Open, with its commitment to open source data, is exactly the opposite: “The City Operating System is the brain of the network and this brain looks at what the citizen, the community, the businesses need and actually adapts to this. It is knowledge built - it takes knowledge from you and translates it into services.

“We are doing something here at Bristol which gives a lot of power to the community,” she adds.

Wilson goes one step further: "Bristol is a Playable City - this is a reaction against the anonymous Big Brother surveillance of smart cities. 

"The technology is there, the question is how do you use the technology? To say it’s all bad - it's only bad if you don't engage with it and make it good. It's just technology - it's neutral so how do we use it?”