Net Zero Mobility: Feasibility studies for optimal data exchange

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation will engage with industry to invest up to £3 million in innovation projects.

As part of the Future Economy Net Zero programme, this competition will focus on digital technologies. This programme will support the government’s drive for zero emission transport and systems as part of the net zero commitment for 2050.

Scope

The aim of this competition, as part of the Innovate UK funded net zero mobility programme, is to understand and overcome the barriers for data sharing or data exchanging in transport.

We will fund collaborative feasibility studies covering the optimal sharing of data or the exchanging of transport data. You project must demonstrate significant improvements in overcoming the barriers to the sharing or exchanging of data. These include:

lack of incentives to share data
lack of knowledge
lack of data standards
commercial, ethical, and reputational risks
legal and regulatory risks
costs of data access
security and privacy

Further information on these barriers to data sharing can be found at Increasing access to data held across the economy.

Your project can address the sharing or exchanging of data between platforms, vehicles, people, freight and infrastructure.

You are encouraged to apply your knowledge and capability to adjacent transport sectors. Your project can demonstrate the data exchange between any mode of transport, either within a mode or across different modes, for example just within maritime or across micromobility and rail transport modes.

Your project must:

demonstrate a need for data sharing for example a data owner or a problem owner
demonstrate what a potential data sharing or data exchange platform might look like and how it might operate in a viably economic manner, this can include aspects of cyber security and privacy as well as other economic considerations
explain how you will engage potential end users to develop a commercially viable use case and examine how to commercialise data, either through a brokerage or through some other mechanism

Your project can address:

the mapping of the value chain for data
the quality of data
validation of data
validation of data users
how to address the source of data
how to build a platform to enable the effective sharing or exchanging of data
data security

You are encouraged to consider cyber security and privacy considerations as part of your application.

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on one or more of the following transport sectors:

Maritime

All sizes and categories of vessel are in scope including commercial and leisure vessels.

Rail

All locomotive classes are in scope including passenger and freight carrying services.

Automotive

All vehicle classes are in scope, including on and off-road vehicles, construction vehicles, special use vehicles for example emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire engines, refuse collection vehicles and recreational vehicles for example motor homes.

Aviation

Drones, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), advanced air mobility (AAM), civil aerospace.

Micromobility

All classes of micromobility solutions are in scope.

Active Travel

All modes are in scope including walking, wheelchair use and cycling.

Eligibility

Your project must:

have total project costs of no more than £250,000
last between 6 months and 9 months
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
start by 1 May 2024
end by 31 January 2025

This competition has a fixed spending term and all grant funding must be claimed by 31 March 2025.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

To lead a project you organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, research and technology organisation, charity, not for profit organisation or public sector organisation
collaborate with other UK registered organisations
include a grant claiming business within your consortium

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

business of any size
academic institution
charity
not for profit
public sector organisation
research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the Innovation Funding Service. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

subsidise the cost to access data
create databases
create data for databases
involve hardware development
involve data sharing or exchanging between platform sensors, for example inputs from multiple and different types of sensor on a car

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:

dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

Up to £3 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For feasibility studies, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 35% if you are a large organisation

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

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