What if the municipality knew exactly where a new pedestrian and bicycle path would be needed? Or which roads are currently slippery and need to be tackled first? Perhaps we would like to be able to inform road users directly about roadworks, whether there has been an accident or that traffic signals are out of action. In the future, this could be possible by collecting, integrating and analysing data from various data sources, including deployed sensors, on a digital platform.

Within the innovation platform Future by Lund, some projects have aimed to investigate how sensor technology can be used to create solutions that provide both comprehensive and immediate data on traffic. In 2020, the project was started Lund Open Sensing City (LOSC) to create an open test bed for the future real-time driven society where people, organizations, infrastructure and sensor systems work together to create a more sustainable society. A basic idea of LOSC is to be able to add several IoT projects one after the other so that the projects can benefit from each other and together create a whole set of flow measurements. FLOW is now incorporated into that whole.

The goal of FLOW is to develop an open system that does not depend on a single supplier but is based on open standards. Traffic flow measurements will be continuous and real-time based and project participants will use everything from sensor technology to a cloud-based data sharing platform with links to analytics tools. The aim of the project is to further develop a number of identified technologies with high potential to be cost-effective and so that they could replace the technologies used today. Some solutions used today are manual traffic counting and metering by deployed hoses across the roads. New solutions are primarily important for urban planning and traffic management, but can also be used in other parts of public activities such as logistics and environmental planning. The flows that are interesting in the project are both people flows (walking, cycling and more) and vehicle flows.

The project will benefit from the infrastructure built in the open IoT test bed in Lund and operated in the Lund Open Sensing City (LOSC) project. For example, the project already exists “Finding Hidden Cycle Potentials” where actors such as Lund University and Trivector look at methods and data to create conditions for increasing the share of sustainable transport together with Lund Municipality.

The call for proposals received 21 applications and five projects received funding.

Vinnova points out some specific reasons for positive decision:

The application is assessed as showing high potential with a focus on a larger infrastructure where more projects can connect. Furthermore, it is judged to be an active constellation with broad engagement and specifically an active needs owner. The project plan is considered to be well-worked and it is positive with visualization for citizens and focus on user cases combined with utility calculation calculations.

(from the Decision Notice)

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Sub-project in FLOW

Financier: IoT Sweden

Project Time: Feb 2022 - June 2024

Project Manager: Anders Trana, Future City of Lund

Project partners: Lund Municipality, Mobile Heights, Axis Communications, Sensative, MiThings, Smart Villages, Smart Visualizer and Acconeer.

What was the result? ONGOING

How is the project taken forward? ONGOING

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Classification in the Future by Lund framework

Layer: ! 2

Zone: Green (2)

What do we mean by zone and layer?

Future by Lund works with a framework to create understanding and provide a basis for strategic decisions regarding the development of the innovation ecosystem where the partnership will be able to review the ecosystem together and conduct strategic dialogues about future development. Working with zones is a way to show what kind of innovation activity and development phase it is, while layers are a way of showing the amount of activities and partner involvement, where you can follow seed investments, project financing and the journey ahead as a result of a project.

Blue, green and yellow zone

To explain the possibilities of the organizational gap between the municipality, business and the university, a model with a blue, a green and a yellow zone is used.

In the blue zone the organization decides everything itself and has control and mandate. Here you control yourself and there is a structure for how you conduct your business. Outside there is Green Zone, located in the gap between organizations. There is a need for cooperation and dialogue with shared mandates. Organizations negotiate and create agreements about who does what, what can be done together, and how it should be done. For example, cities and construction companies often work together to build new areas or concrete projects with common goals and shared tasks and resources. If you go further into it yellow zone the mandate is rather unclear and organisations share challenges and opportunities. Who owns what and who will do what is not clear, presenting greater risks. It is necessary to co-create. In this zone, you need to stimulate, facilitate, test and monitor the outside world in order to create knowledge and understanding. The organizations share the risks surrounding the unknown and the unarticulated. Participant engagement and presence drives the opportunities. Many in Future by Lund's network work precisely with things that are located in the green and yellow zones in areas that you share with others. Activities carried out in the green or yellow zone can eventually become business opportunities and then end up in the blue zone where organizations take home results, use them, build business and scale.

Consequential effects through the layer model

To demonstrate the importance of innovation activities for a system of actors, Future by Lund's associate researcher Emily Wise works with the “layer model” — which is a reporting method used in Vinnova's Vinnprogram and captures dynamics and the “ripple effects” that the initiatives contribute to.

First layer är the support (or base funding) that comes directly to the innovation platform.

Second layer consists of project funding for projects that Future by Lund either leads or participates in.

Third layer is project funding that goes to partners in projects in which Future by Lund does not participate. This is called a spinoff project or follow-on project.

Fourth layer are the qualitative events in the system that are signs that change is taking place in the direction of the sustainable city. It can be new businesses, new products, an increase in the number of employees, new investment streams, new infrastructure and an increase in attention.

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