City Lab Coventry
City Lab Coventry
Highlight of LL objectives and profile/domain
The Coventry City Lab vision is: To improve the quality of life for urban citizens and create an exemplar Low Carbon community in Coventry through:
- Establishing Coventry as a test-bed, incubation hub and international showcase for low carbon innovations
- Collaboration between key, world-renowned, research and industrial bodies and the ENoLL
- Use of the consortium’s critical mass of expertise, facilities and resources to accelerate route to market
Description and Track Record
We will use ICT such as cloud computing, the Coventry City Urban Traffic Management Control System and others to support users to develop and test innovations in Low Carbon Vehicles (Transport) and Sustainable Buildings. A critical mass of expertise, facilities and funding, as detailed below;
- DEHMS (FP7 ICT 2009, Digital Environment Home Energy Management System, partner, led by Manchester LL developing and installing home management systems in 100+ homes £2.3m)
- CABLED (Coventry and Birmingham Low Emission Vehicle Demonstrator, £15m project to trial 90+ electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles with the general public, Coventry City council and University major partners)
- 8 road going hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and a Hydrogen filling station
- 25 EV charging points on University campus and a further 20 within Coventry City.
- £60M Engineering build with usaability lab and area for companies to trial and showcase their innovations
- OPTIMISM (Optimising Passenger Transport Information to Materialize Insights for Sustainable Mobility, FP7 Transport 2011 €1.3m).
- Wilmot Dixon (company retrofitting old building stock in Coventry with low carbon materials & technologies)
- LCVTP (Low Carbon Vehicle Technology Programme to support companies in the design and build of low carbon vehicles, £2m)
- Coventry City Lab will be based on the Coventry University Technology park and will be able to provide users with access to the 100+ business support programmes that the centre provides e.g. apple app lab
- Sensor technology research expertise and tools for energy measurement in homes (Orbit Housing)
- Strong strategic partnership with the City Council, which is likely to lead to a joint venture enterprise as part of the Living lab in year 2/3. Light Planning controls on our technology park in Coventry City Centre have been granted for the specific purpose of City Lab Coventry. This would speed up the process of approval for live city demonstrators in transport, energy efficient buildings and infrastructure.
- Critical mass of academic excellence and £100m of facilities, equipment and funding for low carbon technologies associated with transport, buildings and infrastructure
- Strong links with private companies who have signed up to support CLC:, The Motor Industry Research Association; National Physical Laboratory; IBM; 02, British Telecom; Severn Trent Water; Jaguar Landrover; EoN; Cisco, ARUP; Transport Research Laboratory (TRL); Bright Automotive; Unipart Manufacturing Group and Microcab Industries Ltd.
- Direct access to citizens and other user groups
- EU Funding track record and an ambition to enhance this for the benefit of collaborative LL projects
- A strong and enthusiastic consortium who are fully signed up to the vision, as detailed in section
