In a world first, sensor data will be crowdsourced from Belfast city bikes, to help improve cycling safety in the city. Two hundred devices will be fitted to Belfast Bikes from July. The devices, created by local cycling technology company, See.Sense, use advanced sensor technology to gather crowdsourced data on road surface conditions, accident and near-miss events as well as route activity in real-time. Anonymous data is then communicated over a LoRaWAN network, and advanced data analytics applied to generate insights for the city. The trial will run for one year, with regular reporting throughout. The trial is a R&D collaboration between See.Sense, Belfast City Council, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Bristol and BT.
Philip McAleese, CEO of See.Sense says, “Our city bike offering is innovative on two fronts - firstly, our patent-pending use of sensor technology allows us to collect never-before-seen data from bikes - including road surface and near-miss events. Secondly, our ability to communicate this data in a very low power way from the bike is also unique - requiring only the power generated from the bike’s own dynamo.
This is a huge leap in city bike technology, and it also has the benefit of allowing a city to rapidly deploy a low cost sensor network. The benefit of the technology from the cyclist viewpoint is that they do not need to fuss with apps or other devices to contribute data to their city - they simply hop on the city bike and ride in the knowledge that they are helping their city with their anonymised data from the crowd”.
Irene McAleese, Co-founder of See.Sense says, ‘Many cities around the world aspire to increase cycling participation to tackle the growing problems of congestion, pollution, as well as increase the health of their citizens. But there’s currently a real lack of meaningful data in cycling, so our aim with this pilot is to provide useful data to reduce those barriers to cycling, particularly around safety. Better data will also help to make cycling more visible to politicians, and by helping to connect cycling we allow cities to take adaptive, data-driven real-time decisions, which will help integrate cycling into future mobility solutions for the city’.
Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Nuala McAllister, said: “We are delighted to collaborate on this world-first pilot project. It allows us to access innovative technology for the collection and analysis of data, which can be applied to make cycling safer and more enjoyable for everyone in our city.”
See.Sense - who won the BT Infinity Lab SME Awards for Connected Cities, run in partnership with the Cabinet Office in 2016, continues to be at the forefront of smart cities development. The company was recently featured at the launch of European Cycling Federations’ Platform for European Bicycle Sharing and Systems’ as one of the most exciting technological innovations in the sector.
Versions of the sensors in the city bikes are are already used in the company’s flagship product, ICON, an intelligent and connected bicycle light which is now sold into more than 50 countries world-wide and distributed by Raleigh in the UK and Ireland. The ICON light is being deployed in closed data trials in other cities at present.
With the prediction that there will be 350,000 shared bicycles in operation in Europe by 2025, there is obviously huge potential for the company following a successful pilot.