Accelerating the building of housing using geospatial intelligence

Overview 

The aim of the competition is to investigate how technology can be used to monitor developments of all sizes and types, building an accurate picture of development status from permission to completion and occupation.

Scope

Waltham Forest is investigating how technology can be used to monitor developments of all sizes and types, building an accurate picture of development status from permission to completion and occupation.

The outcome of this competition should be solutions which construct an accurate timeline of development. This means bringing together the diverse sources of information which already exist, and exploring potential new sources of information for the monitoring of development sites. The tool developed will be tested to ensure that it enables planners to make more informed decisions.

Innovate UK are particularly encouraging applications that:

• demonstrate how Waltham Forest can blend existing council owned datasets, such as Council Tax records, with other datasets such as postal address files to build an accurate timeline of development
• explore how to apply new technologies to the collection and analysis of data for monitoring, from satellite imaging to crowdsourcing and collaborative maintenance of data
• investigate how a system might assess the uncertainty present in various data sources and learn from interactions to increase the accuracy of key statistics and forecast estimated dates of completion
• will be tested and proven to work with planners

Exclusions

Innovate UK will not fund projects that cover:

• the assessment of demand for housing
• automation of the collection of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) or other receipts

Eligibility

To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size
• work alone or with others from business, the research base or the third sector as subcontractors

Bids that bring together a consortium of sector specialists are welcomed.

Funding Costs

A total of up to £250,000, including VAT, is allocated to phase 1.

The first phase involves research and development contracts being awarded to demonstrate technical feasibility of the proposed solution.

It is expected that the feasibility study R&D contracts to be up to £50,000, including VAT, for each project, with the anticipation that 5 contracts will be awarded.

Applications must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively for research and development (R&D) services. R&D can cover solution exploration and design. It can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service. R&D does not include:

• commercial development activities such as quantity production
• supply to establish commercial viability or to recover R&D costs
• integration, customisation or incremental adaptations and improvements to existing products or processes

Phase 2: research and development (R&D) contracts, prototype development and testing

The second phase involves up to 2 R&D contracts being awarded to businesses chosen from the successful phase 1 applicants.

Up to £500,000, including VAT will be allocated for each contract, in order to develop a prototype and undertake field testing for up to 12 months.