Zettascale Technology Limited Public Funding

To develop a new and innovative middleware capability which can address the complex multivariate connectivity required, for example, by the Internet of Things domain.

CityVerve is based around the large-scale deployment of technologies, where everyday objects can be connected to a network in order to share data. This approach will demonstrate and evidence the benefits to citizens’ through environmental improvements, economic opportunities, and the more efficient and effective delivery of services such as transport, healthcare and energy. It will provide the ability to create new services and operating models through the interoperability between transport, healthcare and energy systems. The geographical focus of CityVerve will be Greater Manchester; a city region which has been at the forefront of the city devolution agenda, in particular health and social care provision, leading the way in designing new ways of delivering services and providing the blueprint for other cities in the UK and beyond. CityVerve will build on these opportunities to provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform healthcare and other city services around the needs of people, not only is this is an urgent priority for Greater Manchester, but a challenge faced by many global cities.

Ubiquitous availability of network connectivity and computing platforms is laying the foundation for a fully connected cyber-physical world. In cyber-physical world we will monitor and optimise all the pragmatic aspects of our society and introduce a new, digital, dimension in how we interact with people and the environment. If properly exploited, this innovation has the potential to (1) greatly improve our use of key resources, such as energy, (2) reduce pollution, (3) improve life in highly congested metropolis, (4) improve our security, and (4) innovate the way in which we interact with the cyber-physical world, administrations, companies and friends. Examples applications often envisioned are: Smart Grid and Energy Management, where real-time information about the production & consumption of energy is used to route energy and control energy consumption profiles for appliances connected to the grid. Smart Transport where real-time information about traffic & weather conditions is used to optimise the flow and utilisation of both public and private transport; minimising pollution and ensuring the most time effective journey for citizens. These applications share one common need—the necessity to ubiquitously distribute and access real-time information from, and across, a vast variety of devices, ranging from embedded sensors to mobile devices. While the problem of ubiquity is solved at a computing and network connectivity level, it is by no means solved with respect to (1) real-time, and (2) resource efficient (e.g. battery life and network), data distribution. Project Cirrus addresses precisely this gap. It introduces a set of technologies that complement and perfectly integrate with state of the art devices to enable highly scalable, efficient, ubiquitous, real-time and cloud-ready data distribution across a large set of embedded devices and mobile platforms.

Awaiting Public Project Summary