Archived: Data City | Data Nation Challenge – Update

Chirdeep Chhabra from Digital Catapult gives an update on the Transport and Mobility Challenge, including an extended deadline for those taking part. 

Rikesh Shah
Rikesh Shah, Lead Relationship Manager at TfL, helps launch the Transport and Mobility challenge in April


One of the missions of Digital Catapult is to enable a data ecosystem in UK driven by data sharing and data driven problem solving. We are looking to enable and accelerate the next generation of data companies. This means access to key problem areas, problem owners, data, business models, technologies, solution providers, mentors and the right ecosystem.

This led us to plan and launch the Data City Data Nation programme. The Data City Data Nation programme is founded by Digital Catapult in UK and Newton Circus in Singapore. Read more about the first challenge, enabled by Transport for London and Ford Motor Company and launched on 12 April 2016.

Transport and Mobility Challenge – submission date extended

Through Data City | Data Nation we intend to deliver new technology solutions that help understand and predict events on London’s road network and go about enhancing the overall customer experience whilst travelling that network. TfL will provide SCOOT traffic data (described below) to participants of the challenge that is not yet publicly available.

We have now extended the submission date for the challenge to 5th of June and the final presentations to be made on 13th of June. You can join the challenge by registering – https://challenges.dextra.sg/autologin and we would like to engage with you while you are building a solution.

We have created a Slack channel where TFL and Digital Catapult will be happy to engage, mentor and feedback while you develop your solutions. Please complete the form (https://dex12.typeform.com/to/So1zWp ) to be invited to the Data City Data Nation slack channel to enquire and discuss this challenge with us.

The TFL and Digital Catapult teams are keen to help you and enable you succeed as you build your solutions. Your ideas will be judged by senior business managers at Ford Motor Company, TfL and investors. This will give a platform to the best ideas to seek business opportunities in UK and Singapore.

TfL’s SCOOT data

Transport for London’s (TfL’s) Urban Traffic Control System (UTC) uses approximately 12,000 sensors located at junctions across the capital to measure traffic flow. The data produced is used to drive SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique) — the traffic light optimiser system. During this challenge, TfL is aiming to generate greater value from this yet untapped source of data.

The data released for this challenge spans 4 months from January 2015 to the end of March 2015, and covers the North and Central regions of London.

Examples of uses for this data include:

  • Understand traffic flow,
  • Estimate delays,
  • Estimate journey time.

2 Comments

  1. I worked on Scoot for Plessey about 1975 in a joint government-industry project to turn the research version of Scoot into a commercial project. The other commercial participants were Ferranti and G.E.C.
    The research version had taken place in Glasgow.
    We realised that a green wave was possible across that network in the wee sma’ oors. The idea was named Alacrity. I can’t remember the official acronym, but do remember a large artic could run into you.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *