Intelligent technology is key to greenClean, green and a healthy place to live, Peterborough’s environmental credentials have made it one of four ‘Environment Cities’ in the UK. The city now plans to become the UK’s Environment Capital and a unique partnership project is playing a crucial part in achieving that ambition.

Home to approximately 165,000 people, the East Anglian city is growing rapidly. An ambitious 20-year plan is also underway to provide a further 20,000 jobs and 25,000 new houses to accommodate an expected 40,000 more residents by 2021.

This pace of change means global environmental challenges such as reducing use of natural resources, maintaining wildlife habitats, creating a sustainable environment and limiting waste, are vital to Peterborough on a local level, as this growing city works to become the UK’s environment capital.

Commissioned by Peterborough City Council and Opportunity Peterborough, Royal HaskoningDHV has collaborated with IBM and Green Ventures to develop an innovative approach that helps cities maximise current and future sustainability. The Peterborough Model gives us a place to share and understand the information needed to make faster and better decisions.

client | Peterborough City Council

Trevor Gibson, Director of Environment Capital, Peterborough City Council, said: “Cities are complex places. Making positive change is hard and often slow. Visualising a problem makes it easier to understand, and more pressing to fix. Most importantly, if data is shared, collaboration becomes easier, which in turn speeds the pace of change.”

Development of the conceptRoyal HaskoningDHV, IBM and Green Ventures jointly developed the project idea, initially working in free association to develop the project concept. Together the team has huge experience, global expertise and technical understanding of the factors affecting environmental sustainability.

The ultimate aim of the project is to create a three-dimensional online resource that will provide a complete picture of Peterborough’s environmental performance. The first two phases of the project studied data on energy, water, transport, waste and environmental business based in the city.

The project uses existing sets of environmental data produced by various organisations. Combining this information delivers a complete picture of Peterborough’s environmental performance avoiding the high cost of new specialist studies. It also results in a stronger message that will reach more people than if a single sector study had been carried out.

“Royal HaskoningDHV’s wealth of environmental experience

and technical expertise has been invaluable in this project to

progress Peterborough’s aim to become the UK’s Environment

Capital, building on its existing Environment City Status.”

Trevor Gibson, Director of Environment Capital, Peterborough City Council

The interactive three-dimensional format can display information for the city as a whole, or zoom in on particular streets or individual buildings to give dynamic indicators of environmental performance. The resource gives a basis for strategic discussions far beyond figures presented in tables, pie charts or as average percentages.

Project deliveryRoyal HaskoningDHV’s links with organisations in the water, environment, energy, transport and waste sectors in the vicinity, played a key role in encouraging companies involved to work closely together. Coordinated by environmental consultancy Green Ventures, this collaborative process was essential for data gathering, review of extensive data records and reports. It also helped determine current and future issues that might affect Peterborough’s ability to grow sustainably.The information received from local organisations was initially used to formulate the base data behind the platform. The next steps were to develop processes to manipulate and transform the data into a dynamic, visual format. IBM’s role in the project was to lead the technical development behind the data visualisations and to design the web-platform.

Principal Consultant for Royal HaskoningDHV, Amy Savage, said: “All organisations worked closely together to develop the idea and bring the concepts within the data to life. Interactive, colourful and animated, the online platform displays three-dimensional interpretations of data on an open-source web-based map to create a visual understanding of Peterborough’s current performance and future environmental scenarios.

“Professional organisations, such as government agencies and utility companies, will be able to use the resource to easily identify areas of the city that need investment. In addition, members of the public can access the information and use it to improve their environment at a local level.”

Using the model to achieve positive changeLocal utility suppliers, city council departments and environmental organisations will be able to use the platform to model current challenges envision future scenarios and plan environmental quality of life on a strategic level. New information can be added easily. When integrated with data from other organisations, it will encourage a collaborative approach to accelerate the pace of change.

Intelligent technology is key to green

Peterborough residents who pay for city services and contribute to overall local environmental performance will be able to access data via the internet in a downloadable format. User-friendly, three-dimensional graphics will actively engage citizens to initiate environmental change. Posting information on fly-tipping, graffiti or litter, will improve the street environment, while using the resource to demonstrate benefits of installing a water meter or loft insulation, will accelerate change at the micro scale.

The ultimate goal of the project is to improve Peterborough’s environmental performance and sustainability at all levels, drive change forward by encouraging people and organisations to work better together, which will ultimately benefit Peterborough’s society as a whole.

Overcoming challenges, realising opportunitiesThe challenges for the team were to manage the collaboration between a diverse group of organisations. This included overcoming concerns relating to data ownership and complying with all relevant legislation. Key to this was inspiring partner companies to recognise that by uniting existing and future data, all organisations with aims for a sustainable future would benefit. Another challenge was to secure funding, as combining existing data into a fully interactive format was previously a unique, untested idea.

Phil Newby, Director of Green Ventures, said: “The complementary expertise and contact network of Royal Haskoning, IBM and Green Ventures ensured a realistic approach to the challenge of integrating complex data systems in an innovative way - and achieved effective collaboration between organisations that would not normally work together or share data.

“The collaboration process also helps communities to influence decision makers. By doing things differently we can turn global resource and climate challenges into opportunities, achieving integrated solutions that are cheaper, faster to deliver, and more sustainable.”

A beneficial approachThree types of benefits have emerged from the first two phases of development.

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Intelligent technology is key to green

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The model and collaboration programmes have delivered:n Acceleration benefits – where the visualisations and new

dialogue has built confidence, presented opportunities, and made it easier to tackle issues. The visualisation of Peterborough’s Environmental Business Cluster built confidence in the existence and strength of the local ‘clean-tech’ and ‘environmental economy’. This led to the launch of a £60,000 inward investment marketing programme in September 2010.

n Optimisation benefits - where the model can be used to achieve efficiencies and do more or better, for less. Anglian Water (the regional water company) moved plans for the trial of 800 new smart water meters to Peterborough in the knowledge that the model can visualise, track and promote progress. The village of Glinton near Peterborough was the focus of SCV energy visualisation, and received additional council funding to support energy conservation projects and are now part of a £400k EU local community project.

n Strategic collaboration benefits - where major parties operating in the city have begun to develop more aligned strategic solutions. This is where there is the greatest scope for step-changes in city-wide performance. As part of the development of the Peterborough model, a summit was hosted by the leader of the City Council. Attended by senior executives and strategists of local utilities and national regulators, the event helped identify and initiate a number of major collaborative projects. Opportunities discussed included a strategic, joint approach to reducing peak demand for energy as a means for the city to meet climate change targets, while reducing the ongoing capital investment profile for UK power networks.

n The city’s integrated team collaborated to secure £3m of funding from the Technology Strategy Board to take forward some of the solutions identified from the Peterborough Model as a Future City Demonstrator programme.

Future potentialThe pilot of the ‘Peterborough Model’ platform has provided an excellent basis for future phases of the project, and has generated much interest in the UK and internationally. IBM has identified ‘The Peterborough Model’ as a key project as part of it’s worldwide ’Smart Cities’ initiative. The techniques the team is pioneering for cities could be applied to other congested areas, such as ports and estuaries.

Ian Abbott-Donnelly, IBM’s European Chief Technology Officer for Big Green Innovations and Smart Cities, said: “New technologies are becoming increasingly capable of analysing and integrating data to enable cities to respond intelligently to the needs of their businesses, organisations and citizens. As part of the development of The Peterborough Model, we have tested how ‘live’ data, such as real-time information about traffic movements, energy use, or waste collections, could be made available to professionals and the public, and used to improve performance.

“In the future there is even potential to create a virtual Peterborough, which could respond independently to real-world environmental sensors. Based in a virtual operations room, professionals would be able to engage to continually improve environmental performance. This degree of empowerment would take environmental sustainability to the next level.”

Amy Savage T: +44 (0)1733 336 522E: amy.savage@rhdhv.com