SBRI: using data to better understand and respond to road congestion

Overview

This is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition. Funding is provided by the GovTech Catalyst to support the challenge from Department for Transport (DfT) and the Royal Borough of Greenwich.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to generate innovative solutions that help local areas better understand and respond to traffic congestion. Solutions should provide data that is less resource intensive and higher quality than in traditional approaches.

Your proposed solution must:

• try to better understand and respond to traffic congestion in some way
• be suitable for testing in a real world environment after phase 1 development in the UK
• take affordability into consideration
• be innovative

They are particularly encouraging applications that:

• explore how data or analysis can support local areas in both real time traffic interventions and longer term strategic considerations
• look at solutions which are scalable and could be applied within other local areas
• anticipate possible constraints on budget and data skills within local areas
• consider how existing data sets could be better used
• consider the possible value additional data sets could bring and how they could be used and analysed in low cost ways
• consider the types of innovative interventions that could be deployed using this improved data or analysis in order to reduce congestion
• as well as local areas, consider how data or interventions could directly influence the behaviour of motorists across the country

Eligibility

To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation of any size
• work alone or with others as subcontractors (businesses, research base or third sector)

Your application must have at least 50% of its contract value attributed directly and exclusively to 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.

Funding Costs

The feasibility study R&D contracts are being awarded to demonstrate technical feasibility of the proposed solution. £250,000, including VAT, will be awarded. We expect to fund up to 5 projects for up to 3 months at up to £50,000 each, including VAT.

Exclusions

Innovate UK will not fund:

• proposals which rely on the purchase of large amounts of data from a single existing provider
• proposals which heavily duplicate existing solutions

This is the first phase of a 2-phase competition. This first phase focuses on feasibility studies. Phase 2 will be for prototype development and testing.