Bristol City Council - April 2012
Bristol Smart City Programme
By the end of this decade the world’s leading cities will be using smart technologies
to help deliver a cleaner environment, a higher quality of life and a vibrant economy.
Bristol aims to be in the top 20 European cities by 2020 and has made a clear
commitment to create a world-class and inclusive green-digital economy.
Smart City Bristol is a collaborative programme between the public sector, business
and community. The aim is to use smart technologies to meet our ambitious target to
reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020 from a 2005 baseline, as well as our social
and economic objectives. It was launched in 2011 and builds upon the Smart City
Bristol Report commissioned by Bristol City Council and funded by the UK
Department of Energy and Climate Change. This study undertook:
a) An independent analysis of how smart city technologies can contribute to
Bristol’s carbon reduction objectives;
b) Benchmarked Bristol against other world cities; and
c) Offered a set of objective recommendations that will contribute to further
emissions reductions and provide citywide economic benefits.
The study was published in March 2011 (http://www.slideshare.net/Bristolcc/bristolsmart-city-report-7579696) and we also held a Smart & Connected City Strategic
Roundtable, which brought together over 80 city stakeholders. In October 2011 the
Covenant of Mayors made a film about Bristol’s smart city work
http://tinyurl.com/8yygs4z .
Bristol’s aspiration is to ensure prosperity is sustainable and that we become a world
leader in green technologies. We have already adopted a number of smart
technologies and recognise there is a strong macro-economic case for smart city
deployment which draws on Bristol’s economic strengths as a world class knowledge
economy based on aerospace, defence, engineering, ICT and electronics, financial
services, media, creative and environmental industries and our universities.
Bristol’s Digital Partnership (http://connectingbristol.org/) aims to ensure that the
city benefits from the best possible digital infrastructure. Bristol is also an early
adopter of the Eurocities’ Green Digital Charter and the first European City to
carbon footprint our business use of ICT in 2008, which we used to establish a Green
ICT programme to share best practice www.greenaddict.eu. Bristol is investing in
digital infrastructure and connectivity. Bristol City Council owns and manages a
£9 million city fibre network (B-Net) and as one of the UK’s Super Connected Cities
we are working with the UK Government and business to invest in superfast
broadband for all our consumers and a 100% coverage open access Wi-Fi network.
Bristol has adopted a Climate Change and Energy Security Framework
(www.bristol.gov.uk/climatechange) to meet its 40% carbon reduction target by 2020.
We are making good progress, with a 15% reduction in CO2 emissions from 2005 to
2009 or a 20% per capita reduction due to the 6% rise in population. We have the
lowest per capita emissions of the major cities in England (Core Cities). Bristol has
recently been short listed as 1 of the 3 finalists in the 2014 European Green Capital
Award where Bristol was ranked 1st for climate change by the Expert Evaluation
Panel. We have ambitious citywide energy plans and are the first UK local authority
outside of London to receive a £2.5 million grant from the European Investment Bank
to meet most of the costs of developing an energy services company and investment
programme.
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Bristol City Council - April 2012
In Bristol we recognise that it is the innovative integration of different
technologies that make cities and communities ‘smart’ and that this requires the
commitment and close collaboration of city stakeholders. The involvement of
people and communities is even more important; it’s about how people work with
the technology and it’s important to involve them in the development of experiences,
products and services that help the City to achieve its aims. We believe having a
distinctive strength is what makes a Smart City and in Bristol our strength is the
collaboration of our micro-electronic and environmental technology sectors with our
creative/digital companies who are working with communities to make them smart,
for example through Bristol’s Living Lab in Knowle West.
The Bristol Smart City Programme currently focuses on 3 key areas:
 Smart Energy
 Smart Transport
 Smart Data
However further strands are in development recognising the need to address wider
social and economic city challenges for example tele-health. We are currently
implementing a wide range of initiatives, as well as developing future projects and
funding bids. An overview of existing projects within the programme is given below
but further details are available on the projects we are developing from:
Lorraine Hudson (Bristol Futures Group)
Email: Lorraine.Hudson@bristol.gov.uk
Tel: 0117 922 4470
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Bristol City Council - April 2012
Smart Energy
 DEHEMS
The Digital Environment Home Energy Management System (DEHEMS) project looked at
how technology can improve domestic energy efficiency. The project partnership included
a mix of European local authorities, private business and universities. The intention was
to develop and test a home energy management system with the aim of improving the
current monitoring approach to levels of energy being used by households in order to
reduce CO2 emissions. In Bristol the smart metering technology was deployed in 50
social houses in Knowle West.
The key learning was it is critical to engage citizens and work with them in a collaborative
approach. From the start of the project, all the DEHEMS users were organised in “Living
Labs” which are groups of people who are actively involved in the creation and evaluation
of technologies which they will ultimately use. The project found that behaviour change is
often best carried out in a group or community context, the presence of other people with
the same interest and motivation helps to reinforce the change in behaviour and
eventually turn it into a habit. When people are given access to information about their
energy usage in a way which makes sense to them, they will often change their
consumption patterns very dramatically. Many users who liked the DEHEMS dashboard
used it as a game for investigating their real time energy usage by switching on and off
various appliances and viewing the impact. In ICT projects like DEHEMS priority must be
given to enhancing the user experience and the golden rule is to keep things simple.
UK partners: Bristol City Council, Knowle West Media Centre, Hildebrand Technology
Ltd, University of Salford, Coventry University, Manchester City Council, Birmingham City
Council and Clicks and Links Ltd.
Duration: 2008-11
Funding: European Commission FP7
Website: http://www.dehems.eu/about
BCC contact: kevin.omalley@bristol.gov.uk
 3e-Houses
The 3e-Houses project consists of integrating the most common ICTs into social housing
in order to allow homes to save energy, shift their consumption from peak to off-peak
hours and reduce CO2 emissions. The project intends to promote energy saving by
helping users to find out how and how much they consume by using the most common
ICTs applied to energy consumption. It offers:
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Real time monitoring and management of the energy consumption
Integration of renewable energies
Development of tools for designing and evaluating energy saving plans
Thus an interaction is created between the intelligent devices and the users, allowing the
users to increase their knowledge of their energy consumption and therefore change their
patterns of energy use.
3e-Houses was deployed in social housing in Germany and Spain in 2010 and is being
replicated in Bulgaria and Bristol in 2012. In Bristol 100 social houses are participating in
the project and partners are working with them in a collaborative approach building on the
finding from DEHEMS.
UK partners: Bristol City Council, Knowle West Media Centre, Toshiba Research Europe
Ltd and IP-Performance Ltd.
Duration: 2010-13
Funding: European Commission ICT-PSP
Website: http://www.3ehouses.eu/
BCC contact: kevin.omalley@bristol.gov.uk
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Bristol City Council - April 2012
 Low Carbon Network Fund - B.R.I.S.T.O.L.
Buildings, Renewables, Integrated Storage with Tariffs to Overcome network Limitations
(B.R.I.S.T.O.L.) was funded through Ofgem’s Low Carbon Networks Fund in November
2011. Western Power Distribution are the consortium lead and Bristol City Council will
deploy the technology at their sites, with Knowle West Media Centre co-ordinating the
outreach work, Siemens providing the technology and the University of Bath (working with
RWE npower) as the academic partner.
This innovative project will integrate Battery Storage with Demand Response, Direct
Current Networks to connect PV panels and DC appliances together and Smart Tariffs.
The technology will be implemented in 10 schools, 1 office and 30 homes (all owned by
the Council) and will address issues associated with the large-scale deployment of
photovoltaic (PV) generation. The £2.8m project will run for 3 years and fund measures to
enable the local electricity network to become smarter and more efficient, reducing CO 2
emissions and energy bills, and seeking solutions to overcome issues associated with
integrating low carbon technologies into the low voltage distribution network.
UK partners: Western Power Distribution, Bristol City Council, Knowle West Media
Centre, Siemens and the University of Bath.
Duration: 2012-15
Funding: Ofgem LCNF
Website: coming soon
BCC contact: lorraine.hudson@bristol.gov.uk
 Smart Spaces
The aim of the Smart Spaces project is to substantially reduce peak and overall demand
for energy and water across EU public buildings. The project will develop a service
comprising innovative ICT-based energy decision support, awareness and management
service components. Decision support is provided directly to city energy managers and
other professionals responsible for building performance, and to building users, both staff
and visitors to the building, including school pupils and university students and the
general public, enabling all to optimise their energy-related behaviour based on up-todate meter feedback on energy consumption.
There will be 11 pilots in 8 countries with almost 20,000 professionals and staff users and
it is estimated to reach more than 6,000,000 visitors annually. The partnership is being
led by Empirica, a German consultancy firm based in Bonn that specialises in the
application and development of new ICT and the information society.
Bristol City Council’s Energy Management Unit will be working in partnership with
SystemsLink, a leading producer of energy management software for local authorities, to
develop a smart system that will utilise the daily electricity and gas meter readings to
identify where waste is occurring. This information can be utilised to deliver significant
energy savings and make accurate recordings of the Council’s energy usage and it will be
deployed at over 500 buildings in Bristol.
UK partners: Bristol City Council and SystemsLink
Duration: 2012-14
Funding: European Commission ICT-PSP
Website: coming soon
BCC contact: roddy.black@bristol.gov.uk
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Bristol City Council - April 2012

STEEP
Systems Thinking for comprehensive city Efficient Energy Planning (STEEP) is a project
under the FP7 Energy - Smart Cities 2012 call involving San Sebastian (Spain), Bristol
(UK) and Florence (Italy). The objective is to contribute to the European aim of making
the production and use of energy in cities more sustainable and efficient by the
development of smart city plans which address the efficiency of energy flows across all
the key sectors in the energy value chain in an integrated manner.
It will use a systems thinking approach to create a District Energy Master Plan Process
Model. This will be applied in 3 city districts to better understand the systems impacting
upon energy use (including energy supply/ distribution, buildings, transport, street lighting,
digital infrastructure and waste) and the interventions that can be taken to meet ambitious
energy and carbon targets. The process model will be enriched and validated through
open innovation methodologies applied with the stakeholders. Bristol will lead Work
Package 2 developing the Process Model using Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone as our
pilot district.
The learning obtained will then be applied at the city level and will be the basis for the
development of comprehensive Smart City Plans. With the knowledge gathered in this
process, an open-source methodology for developing integrated Smart City Plans will be
created along with Key Performance Indicators for monitoring their effectiveness.
UK partners: Bristol City Council, Arup, University of Bristol
Duration: 2013-14
Funding: European Commission FP7 – currently in negotiation phase
Website: coming soon
BCC contact: lorraine.hudson@bristol.gov.uk
Smart Transport
 ICT 4 EVEU
The ICT services for Electric Vehicle Enhancing the User experience (ICT 4 EVEU)
project aims to deploy an innovative set of ICT services for electric vehicles in pilots
across Europe.
The scope of the ICT services is the integration of different Management Systems
operating on the existing EV infrastructures in the cities where the pilots will be run, so
that related services can be deployed and make use of these interconnected
infrastructures (charging points, control centres and vehicles). The pilots will be based in
a growing, geographically speaking, scope. There will be three main pilots:
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Bristol (UK): Urban area pilot.
Pamplona and Vitoria (Spain). Urban and inter-regional pilots. Connecting two cities
located in different regions within a 100Km distance.
Ljubljana and Maribor (SIovenia). International pilot: connecting the major cities in
Slovenia.
The main services for the users will be the reservation of charging points in advance,
creation of an interactive map or charging points for drivers, review of charging reports,
SMS notifications and communication with energy suppliers among others. The services
will be accessed through website or/and via smart-phones.
Bristol will be the urban pilot area for the project. The aim of the project is to encourage
the uptake of electric vehicle usage through the development of a web based database of
all charging locations, including information of their specification, location and availability.
This will be supported by the development of smart phone and social networking
applications. The technology will also be utilised to monitor the take up of infrastructure
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Bristol City Council - April 2012
and provide guidance on extension of the infrastructure, including usage at park and ride
sites and access to public transport options and timetables.
UK partners: Bristol City Council
Duration: 2012-15
Funding: European Commission ICT-PSP
Website: coming soon
BCC contact: peter.fryer@bristol.gov.uk
 Bristol Freight Consolidation Centre
Initially set up for a trial period of eight months in May 2004, the Bristol Freight
consolidation scheme has been running ever since and has helped to reduce congestion
and associated emissions in one of the UK’s busiest cities. The freight consolidation
centre works by acting as a central delivery hub on the periphery of Bristol where
deliveries are streamlined and the number of delivery vehicles travelling into Broadmead
and Cabot circus are reduced, whilst at the same time it provides an improved delivery
service to retailers. The contract is operated by DHL and it utilises electric vehicles to
make the deliveries. In 2011 the scheme was extended to cover Bath as a pilot project.
The project has received funding from the CIVITAS initiative, which is co-financed by the
European Union, and helps cities achieve more sustainable, clean and energy-efficient
urban transport systems.
UK partners: Bristol City Council, Bath & North East Somerset Council, DHL
Duration: 2004 – ongoing
Funding: European Commission CIVITAS
Website: http://www.start-project.org/local_freight_networks.html
BCC contact: ed.minihane@bristol.gov.uk
 Bristol Traffic Control Centre
Bristol has had an urban traffic centre since the 1980s but in 2008 this was upgraded and
the Urban Traffic Control Centre (UTCC) now uses more than 200 cameras to monitor
vehicular movements throughout the city, ensuring highway safety and the continual flow
of traffic throughout the city's busy road network. These are linked to the remote
communications and equipment room via the council's own fibre network (B-Net), and the
images are displayed for operators on a large rear-projection video wall. Information from
sensors which monitor how many cars, buses, vans and lorries pass certain points is also
fed back into the system which can alter signals to allow traffic to flow more freely. The
UTCC collates a wide range of transport data and we are exploring how to open this data
up so that communities and organisations can make use of it in creative ways including
supporting sustainable transport initiatives.
UK partners: Bristol City Council
Duration: 2008 – ongoing
Funding: Bristol City Council
Website: none available
BCC contact: adam.crowther@bristol.gov.uk
Smart Data
 B-Open Data Store
B-Open is Bristol City Council’s open data portal. The aim is to promote transparency and
increase public and neighbourhood engagement, making it easier to share information
with citizens. Bristol is world famous for its creative industries; we can use that local
genius to work with information and data to create applications, websites, mobile products
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Bristol City Council - April 2012
or installations that will have a positive impact on the people of the city. Through
Connecting Bristol, the City Council has been a pioneer and strong advocate for the
positive impacts of digital technology on local communities, businesses and the
environment.
For example in 2010 Bristol City Council in partnership with the Watershed supported a
Media Sandbox Competition which centred on the creation of ideas that explore rich
experiences augmented by open data or mobile, wireless and sensory technologies. The
competition used data from the City Council in new and creative ways; commissions
included Blossom Bristol an android mobile-based game that allows users to plant virtual
crops in any location in Bristol http://www.watershed.co.uk/ished/mediasandbox/commissions/2010/
UK partners: Bristol City Council
Duration: 2010 – ongoing
Funding: Bristol City Council
Website: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/bristols-b-open-datastore
BCC contact: mark.newman@bristol.gov.uk
 My Mobile Bristol
My Mobile Bristol is an exciting collaboration between the University of Bristol and Bristol
City Council that intends to facilitate communities of developers, data providers, policy
makers and user groups to promote the development and deployment of innovative
technologies.
The project will address areas of common interest, including:
 The integration of time and location sensitive data in the Bristol area
 Optimising the delivery of time and location sensitive information for mobile
devices, especially in relation to transport information and where there may be
benefits in terms of environmental and sustainability impact
 Piloting a “campus” application that targets smart-phone users
UK partners: University of Bristol and Bristol City Council
Duration: 2010 – ongoing
Funding: JISC (Business and Community Engagement Programme)
Website: http://mymobilebristol.com/
BCC contact: mark.newman@bristol.gov.uk
 Whose Data?
The Whose Data? project explores new and innovative ways in which “live” data can be
represented to benefit local people. The four artists working with the Knowle West Media
centre on the project are Julie Myers, Susanne Stahl, Paul Hurley and Richard Layzell
and they are utilising different local data sources including Bristol City Council’s data.
UK partners: Knowle West Media Centre, Artists
Duration: 2011 – ongoing
Funding: Arts Council England Grants for the Arts award
Website: http://whosedata.net/
BCC contact: carolyn@kwmc.org.uk (Knowle West Media Centre)
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