From innovation project in Lund to a commercial solution for the British railway network

A key strength of the Future by Lund collaboration is developing IoT solutions that create public value. This began within the framework of the SOM project which started in 2017, involving more than twenty sub-projects, and has continued with a series of other initiatives. One partner that has been involved from the very beginning is Sensative, whose platform Yggio receives and reports sensor data.

Mats Pettersson, CTO and co-founder of Sensative, explains how the company joined the SOM project following an enquiry from Future by Lund.

"It was Per Persson, the then Head of Business Development for the Municipality of Lund, who suggested that the project might be a good fit for Sensative. At that time, Yggio wasn't being used in the context of smart cities; we were solely focused on properties and were in an early pilot phase. Without the SOM project, we might still only be working with building automation."

Sensative helped build Lund's sensor network, and within the SOM project, Yggio collected data on things like plant habitats, bin fill levels, parking spaces, and power grids. At the same time, an increasing number of cities, municipal infrastructure companies, and property firms began using Yggio as their platform.

The SOM project concluded some time ago and was followed by the Swedish initiatives LOSC and FLOW in which Sensative and Yggio continued to play a central role. In the Horizon project Elaborator , 38 partners from across Europe are collaborating to design inclusive, safe, affordable, and sustainable urban mobility. Sensative's Yggio platform serves as the common platform for managing and sharing traffic data across European cities.

In the autumn of 2026, a new update for Yggio was presented, which Sensative describes as a major step forward. It includes a highly intuitive drag-and-drop graphical user interface for the rules engine, making it very easy to define how sensor data triggers urban actions, such as lighting control. It also features an AI assistant to support the development of new IoT applications, and a powerful application for managing large municipal organisations, including granular user permissions for accessing city data or controlling smart functions.

Sensative has been involved in a number of projects with Future by Lund – what has this meant for the development of your Yggio platform?

"Future by Lund didn't just give us the opportunity to get started – the projects became an environment where we could build and test what Yggio is today, together with others. Yggio became the hub that enabled different sensors, systems, and stakeholders to collaborate in the smart city. The fact that we were then able to continue development together in several subsequent projects has been incredibly valuable. A platform like Yggio is never finished. We have been developing it for over ten years, and the pace of development is faster today than ever before," says Mats Pettersson.

For Future by Lund, having Sensative as a project partner has been very important.

"The collaboration with Sensative is one of our strongest examples of how IoT can create real societal value," says Anders Trana, who has been the project manager for several of the IoT projects. "They have been a key partner ever since we started building Lund's sensor network. We have seen Yggio evolve from our initial projects – covering everything from connected bins to parking spaces – into a secure and sought-after European alternative for digital sovereignty in the smart city. This demonstrates exactly the kind of impact and maturity that our collaborative projects can deliver."

Sensative’s product portfolio extends beyond Yggio; they also market ultra-thin sensors that can be installed invisibly and feature long battery life. The Strips series of sensors are used for detection in a range of areas, such as water, climate, security, light, power, and electricity – within sectors like agriculture, urban planning, and transport. Trains became a particularly significant business area for Sensative when London North Eastern Railway installed their sensors to inform passengers which seats are occupied.

Parts of this can also be traced back to the project work.

"FLOW is a fantastic example of what this type of innovation collaboration can lead to. Together with Acconeer and SweIoT we developed technology for radar-based traffic and flow measurement. The knowledge and relationships we built there later became an important foundation for our radar-based SeatSense sensor, PRISM. Today, that technology is being installed on long-distance trains between London and Scotland. It’s quite an amazing journey – from an innovation project in Lund to a commercial solution in British rail traffic," says Mats Pettersson.

The last few years have moved quickly – hundreds of European cities, property companies, and energy, water, and transport operators have chosen Yggio as their central data platform for digitalisation.

At the same time, factors such as the 2018 US CLOUD Act, a volatile global situation, and the weakening of democracy have created concern in Europe, leading to discussions about European digital sovereignty and data protection. Lists of local alternatives have now been created in Europe, and Sensative and Yggio are among those listed.

"We have had a clear starting point from the very beginning: whoever owns the infrastructure should also have control over it," continues Mats Pettersson. "Yggio can be hosted in the city's own data centres, by municipal companies, or in European environments. No external party can access data without the customer's explicit decision, no foreign power can shut down the platform, and no one can restrict access to updates for political reasons."

An innovation journey often requires decisions to take new paths – but Sensative's success shows that it can be just as important not to compromise on what you initially identify as central, which in this case has been safeguarding customer data. Digital twins and connected sensor data are in increasing demand, and Sensative has shown that they are ready to digitise the physical world!