Back in November last year GeoVation awarded £1000 to The Sunshine Bank in Kent Council’s innovation competition themed: Help people help each other in their neighbourhoods.
The award was for best use of OS OpenData in their ‘Sunlighting in Kent’ prototype, which aims to help individuals and organisations connect with each other to exchange skills, resources and opportunities in their local area.
‘Sunlights’ consist of skills which people want to share while ‘Sunlacks’ will be gaps which members or groups are trying to fill. The concept will use mapping from OS OpenData to provide visual information about the locations of members and places, helping to match available skills and resources to people who need them. Members could search the site for people in the area who want to ‘Sunlight’ or post their need to the community notice board under ‘Sunlacks’.
Since winning the award The Sunshine Bank have been busy looking for funding to take this prototype forward and have a meeting with Kent Business School to explore this.
Our new GeoVation Challenge will link closely with this theme of innovating to help people in your neighbourhood and improve local services. Watch this space as there will be more details later this week.
In September 2011, GeoVation challenge winner’s liftshare began development of ‘myPTP- A Travel Plan Just for Me’; an innovative web-based tool, designed to provide personalised travel plans to individuals at a fraction of the current time and cost.
liftshare’s myPTP Project Manager, Katie Lumley, gives us a most up-to-date progress report on how the tool has been shaping up over the last 5 months:
Since September 2011, the liftshare project team have been working hard to develop and refine one of our most exciting projects – myPTP – funded through GeoVation and the Ideas in Transit project. myPTP will uniquely combine public transport, walking, cycling, and car-share options for individual journeys, and have the potential to help any organisation or community effectively deliver personalised travel plans (PTPs) at a fraction of the current time and cost associated with traditional approaches.
myPTP encourages and enables users to make informed choices about the way they travel.
Development began with design, before working to build, test, and refine the new and innovative web-based tool. During November, our biggest hurdle; accessing data for all modes of transport (walk, cycle, car-share, bus and train) across the UK, was overcome, and work to integrate data for all transport options then began in December.
Users will input individual’s journey information and in return will receive clear information on all transport options available to them, including maps, local provision options such as community transport, and any incentives the organisation has put in place to change their travel behaviour e.g. a week’s free bus pass. Ongoing communication is then possible to monitor modal shift and follow up changes in provision etc. Below is a sneak-preview of the online myPTP results:
Over 38 organisations have already expressed interest in using myPTP to deliver PTPs to individuals, and of those three organisations have been chosen to pilot the tool this February. These initial tests will be carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of West of England, through the Ideas in Transit project, and will help us to evaluate the usefulness and usability of myPTP from an end-user point of view (that’s me and you!), as well as assess its impact ongoing on travel behaviours. We are looking forward to hearing feedback from the test pilots so we can keep innovating and refining myPTP to ensure it is useful and effective for all.
We are very excited with the progress of myPTP so far; both internal development of the tool itself, as well as its seeming ability to appeal and meet individuals, organisations, and transport operator needs. If you would like to:
Help individuals make informed smarter choices about their mode of travel, as well as improve accessibility.
Better understand transport patterns of your organisation, to increase efficiency and save time and cost.
Help Local Authorities determine shortfalls in provision and help local transport operators determine what services will best satisfy demand.
Have on-going communication with individuals about their travel options to achieve real modal shift, and to relay any possible changes in provision.
myPTP could be your solution. For more information please feel free to contact me, Katie Lumley, on: (01953) 451166 or katie@liftshare.com.
One-planet living in the current economic climate means “doing more with less, and doing it sustainably” at work, home, at play and in our neighbourhoods. With that in mind we are currently working with a number of other organisations to develop and launch our next two GeoVation challenges, which we are really excited about. We shall be launching these early in the new year so watch this space and @Geovation for further news.
We recently held a GeoVation PowWow event for one of the new challenges at the Royal Geographical Society, London. GeoVation PowWow’s are workshops that unpack meaty problems / unmet needs around a particular challenge by bringing together a unique mix of participants. These problems are then synthesised into themes and supported with insights providing great opportunities to innovate. GeoVators responding to a particular challenge will have access to the PowWow output to help ensure that the ideas they are posting address a real, identified problems / unmet needs.
PowWow participants kindly joined us from Barking and Dagenham Council, Business in the Community, Cabinet Office, Design Council, Kent County Council, NESTA, Nonon, Ordnance Survey, Social Reporter, University of the Arts, and UnLtd.
With OS OpenData you can freely access a selection of the most detailed mapping datasets available for Great Britain and I thought you might be interested in some of the improvements to the OS OpenData website recently.
The Community section has a new OS Open forum, merging the two previous threads of OS OpenSpace and OS OpenData and giving the chance to post your questions and answers about Ordnance Survey products and services available.
If you’re just getting started with OS OpenData, a visit to the wiki could be ideal. There’s a getting started guide, exercises and case studies to give a good feel for how to use OS OpenData and give you a helping hand on your way.
You can also visit the Galleryto see some of the applications that have been developed and the websites that are using OS OpenData. There are examples from several developers, including Historic Churches of Great Britain. This website provides photographs and locations of churches visited and not yet visited by the owner. The website is powered by an Access database using OS OpenData Boundary-Line and Vector Map® District’s ‘Places of Worship’ category to accurately provide the church locations.
If you’re a developer and would like to showcase your project, you can apply on the Gallery page.
From Discover more you can find out more about all of the products available in OS OpenData and the OS OpenSpace and OS OpenData licensing have now been brought into one place under the Licensing link.
So why don’t you take a look and find out more about the benefits of using OS OpenData to develop your ideas and applications?
There’s still time to sign up for the Kent Connects Developing Solutions Camp on 25 November in Gravesend and help design or develop prototypes for selected ideas. Find out how to get involved & register for the event here.
Kent Connects competition aims to stimulate collaboration between public services, entrepreneurs and communities to develop innovative ways of using technology to improve your neighbourhoods. There are 2 challenges “Report local issues” and to “Help people help each other in their neighbourhoods” with up to £2000 in prizes! GeoVation is supporting the second of these challenges and looking for prototypes that make the best use of OS Open Data. You can see examples of prototypes using OS OpenData and OS OpenSpace below.
By putting forward a software or visual prototype, you could see it become reality and help make a difference to your community. You have between now and the 18th November to submit a high level functional description of your prototype! The judges will filter down the top six prototypes (three prototypes for each of the Options below) that will be worked on the day.
Twitter chat: On Thursday 10 November between 3-4pm there we will host a live #developingsolutions Twitter chat. Feel free to ask any questions you have about the Developing Solutions event or competition, OS Open Data, OS Open Space and Open 311 and we will be on hand to answer your questions straight away.
To join in:
1. Sign on to Twitter between 3 and 4 pm on Thursday
2. Follow the hashtag #developingsolutions
3. Ask any questions you have using the hashtag #developingsolutions in each question
4. We’ll answer your questions, also using the hashtag #developingsolutions
Kent Connects are running two challenges which have called for radically simple and useful ideas to “Report local issues” and to “Help people help each other in their neighbourhoods”. Supported by the Cabinet Office, these have been the first ever local government challenges launched on the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub platform.
GeoVation is supporting the second of these challenges, and as members of the judging panel, it has been a very hard task to select a winning idea amongst a number of fascinating entries. However, after careful consideration the GeoVation team selected Sunshine Bank as the challenge winners – congratulations!. This exciting idea not only delivers a valuable service to local communities but actively encourages volunteer participation through a fun and engaging recognition scheme. We are looking forward to working with Sunshine Bank to build on their concept and to explore how the idea can benefit from using mapping data from OS OpenData.
With the best ideas now selected Kent Connects, is keen to stimulate collaboration between civil society and the digital sector, and are now launching a call to all designers and software developers to put forward prototypes on both of the challenges. Participating designers and developers will be able to design and develop at Kent Connects all day event on 25th November in Gravesend.
As well as coming up with prototypes on the two challenges Kent Connects are looking to stimulate the use of open data and visualisation.
Kent Connects state: “There are amazing opportunities for open data to be used. We know that open data is a very new area for the public. Most people will never have heard of open data, let alone used it to create visualisations. Others however may have used tools to turn data into new web applications. Similarly, visualisations are very powerful at capturing people’s imagination and getting them to reflect on what particular issues mean to them. Developers and designers will be encouraged to put forward prototypes using these techniques in a bid to win the prize for the best two prototypes at our Developing Solutions event sponsored by Kent Connects, GeoVation, Kent Connects and Lagan”.
GeoVation is looking forward to the event and has put up a £1000 fund to award to the prototype that makes best use of OS OpenData and/or OS OpenSpace in “Helping people help each other in their neighbourhoods”.
Making the Mission:Explore website is a continual process. The funding that we won 5 months ago through GeoVation from Ideas in Transit and the Technology Strategy Board has allowed us to implement a number of significant features. These include:
Partner accounts which let other organisations create their own challenges;
Scoring and leaderboards, which will soon also include groups;
An extras box on mission pages which includes QR codes that can be scanned for quick access to the relevant page along with a widget which can sit on other websites;
Explorer profile pages so that users can keep track of started and completed missions, their points and keep an explorer log;
A content management system for creating, risk checking, tagging, scoring and publishing missions;
A split community with those not logged in and aged 12 or under not being able to see user generated content and missions which are rated for older users.
National Geographic Education are already using the site for their work in promoting geography awareness week. I presented on Mission:Explore for teachers supporting National Geographic in Portland in August and you can see the videos from this here . Love Forest, OPAL, Priory School, the Geographical Association and many others are currently live on Mission:Explore or soon will be.
The core of the GeoVation work is to see how Mission:Explore can be used to increase the number of family leisure users on the National Cycle Network. Crucially, we want them to come back too. We are working with Sustrans not only to create the challenges but also to monitor user numbers in the field. An additional component is a the work we are doing within the project for the dairy company Arla. Arla want to bring a wide range of children Closer to Nature and we are bringing all of this together by using Mission:Explore and the National Cycle Network to draw young people out of sub-urban areas an into ‘nature spaces’. Our first trial will take place in Berkshire next month and we will be using our findings from this work to decide our following steps.
Last week we were lucky enough to be invited by the Technology Strategy Board to have a stand at Innovate ’11, the innovation networking event and exhibition. This is an example of the one of the unexpected benefits of working with GeoVation that has been a great help to our work. Innovate ’11 is was an awesome event and one that I would recommend you attend in the future if you are interested in cutting-edge innovation and creativity. At Innovate much of the interest in Mission:Explore was for rebranding it so that organisations or regions could have their own bespoke versions.
We are now at a stage where we are looking for GeoVators to GeoVate with us. We have a limited number of free accounts on Mission:Explore which can be used by charities and public sector organisations to create games, hunts, trails, learning activities and more. If you or someone you know would be interested in this offer they should email us at hello@missionexplore.net to find out more.
We will be blogging again next month with an update on our work to increase users of the National Cycle Network.
If you’re interested in how we ran the ‘How can we improve transport in Britain?’ GeoVation Challenge, the slide show below gives a summary of what happened before, during and after the GeoVation Camp. From identifying the problems at a Problem Framing Workshop to the weekend camp – it’s all there, along with some great photos and feedback.
Last month in our blog we told you about ways2work, a great resource to find out what organisations are doing to reduce the negative impacts of their work-related travel. Some of your companies may already be leading the way in reducing impacts of travel to work so you might be interested in the BITC ways2work Award, a national award built on the successful foundations laid by last year’s BITC/NBTN Regional Sustainable Travel Award.
BITC Awards for Excellence are the most credible, influential and well established National Awards for Responsible Business, independently assessed by industry peers. The aim of the ways2work Award is to identify inspiring examples of innovation and action by organisations reducing the impacts of how they work and travel in relation to their work and through this to reward best practice and inspire others to take action.
The ways2work award reflects the Department for Transport’s new dual focus on sustainable travel and alternatives to travel. The award is aimed at companies that can evidence the benefits of their interventions and ideas that reduce the impacts of ONE OR BOTH of the following:
How their employees travel in relation to their work. This covers commuting and/or business travel and what they are doing to reduce car use, and flights, and encourage more sustainable and active forms of transport such as carsharing, using public transport, cycling and walking. Also, what they are doing to encourage more fuel efficient driving.
and/or
How their employees work. This covers policies and technologies that facilitate reduced commuting and /or business travel, including flexible working policies (which for example facilitate off-peak travel amongst many other things) or supporting homeworking through the provision of good technology and IT systems. The technology could be anything from telephone conferencing to telepresence and everything in between!
ways2work are interested in what companies are doing, why and how. They would also like to hear about the benefits of these actions such as reduced costs, emissions, absence and improved productivity, employee well being, work/life balance and community relationships. Find out more about the ways2work Award and, if you are interested, there’s just over 2 weeks left to submit the applications, deadline Friday 4 March.
GeoVation’s Chris Parker participated in the Supply Chain Innovation and Excellence Forum (SCIE) hosted at Ford Dunton, Ford’s European Technical Centre. SCIE is a collaboration between government, businesses, and academia working together to develop leading edge thinking, and innovative products, services and business models in addressing supply chain excellence. SCIE is focussed largely on Essex, Kent and East Sussex.
Essex Council leaders open and closed the forum, emphasising its importance in developing the regional economy. The Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser to Department for Transport Professor Brian Collins set the economic, social and environmental context. There followed a number of excellent examples of how SCIE initiatives are already gaining traction. Check out, for example, Abby Couriers electric delivery vehicles
A stimulating afternoon session generated ideas in three areas: low carbon, last mile and informed logistics, and multi-modal which capped an informative event with plenty of time to learn of others stimulating initiatives.
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individuals and organisations connect with each other to exchange skills, resources and opportunities in their local area.
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