"Intel: London to be city of the future"

Intel announced it will partner with two leading London universities to form a new research institute

A global hub for research into the future of city living will be based in London, Intel has announced.

The computer chipmaker will collaborate with Imperial College London and University College London to launch the ‘Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities’.

Intel hopes that cities of the future will be built around huge networks of sensors providing data on pollution, water supply, traffic and populations. Analysing the information could enable cities and planners to adapt more quickly, but will also require large, cloud-based servers which Intel hopes it will, eventually, be awarded contracts to provide.

“The Institute could enable us to make all kinds of intelligent systems a reality in cities,” said Edward Astle, Pro Rector Enterprise at Imperial College London. “One example of how our research could work in practice is where there is a major leak from a water supply, flooding the roads. We could introduce a network of sensors that would detect the leak, divert the flow of water to prevent more damage and wirelessly transmit information to transport authorities so that traffic could be diverted, preventing congestion and general city-wide disruption.”

The Institute, part of a multi-million pound investment programme, was unveiled at a meeting at Number 10 Downing Street. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the new body was “recognition of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the UK becomes the technology centre of Europe, building on success such as Tech City and the recent investments in supercomputing”.

Intel said its aim was to develop computer technology that will enhance the sustainability of cities and their inhabitants' quality of life. It hopes that a sensor network could, for example, be used to predict the effects of extreme weather conditions on water supplies, and allow the provision of more accurate information.



Justin Rattner, Intel’s Chief Technology Officer and director of Intel Labs, said that “In 2050, most of the nine billion people in the world will live in cities. The demands of cities will be highly representative of the demands of humanity.”


The institute in London will initially employ about a dozen researchers focused on the application of computing technologies to enhance cities from a social, economic and environmental point of view.


The Technology Strategy Board has also announced a new initiative aimed at encouraging businesses to invest in ways to allow older people to live at home for longer. Called “delivering assisted living lifestyles at scale” (Dallas), the Government said the £25million scheme would help “hundreds of thousands of people” by 2015.