(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/bubaone)
Bristol, a city in South West England, has recently attracted international attention as the European Green Capital. At the launch of “Bristol is Open” yesterday, attendees saw how the city is positioning itself to lead the way for connected, programmable cities through strategic partnerships and world-class infrastructure.
To understand Bristol’s potential on the global stage, it helps to know a little about the city’s creative and technical heritage. Many people associate Bristol with Aardman Studios, creators of Wallace and Gromit, and the influential band Massive Attack. While that cultural legacy is real, Bristol is also a hub for advanced technology and microelectronics.
Paul Wilson, Managing Director of Bristol is Open, highlighted the region’s engineering strengths: “Half of new cars sold worldwide include a chip designed close to Parkway Station in Bristol. Nine out of ten of the top global communications companies use networking chips developed in Bath.” Large multinational firms such as Oracle, Intel, HP, Toshiba and Infineon have R&D teams in the area, and Nvidia has acquired local expertise through Icera. These companies and others make Bristol a magnet for talent and industry.
Microelectronics is one of Bristol’s core strengths, and international firms like Huawei have been attracted by the local skill base. Alongside these established players, Bristol’s startup scene is thriving. One notable example is Ultrahaptics, which creates tactile sensations in mid-air to let users feel virtual objects without gloves or wearable devices.
Research centers and labs reinforce the city’s advantage. The Bristol Robotics Lab, the largest robotics centre in Europe, and the University of Bristol’s Quantum Science and Nanotechnology centre are world-class facilities. Together with skilled people and innovative companies, they provide the foundation for advanced, connected-city projects that depend on robust infrastructure.
Although the UK trails many countries in average consumer broadband speed—Ookla’s Net Index ranks the UK 31st with an average download speed of about 30 Mbps—Bristol is building infrastructure that far exceeds typical residential connections. Software Defined Networking (SDN) opens new possibilities for fine-grained control of network resources, and Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, Chief Technology Officer of Bristol is Open, is ensuring the city’s infrastructure can support data-intensive projects.
(Image: Planetarium / Data Dome)
One high-profile example is the transformation of the planetarium at the At-Bristol science centre into a 4K-capable “Data Dome.” The planetarium is being refitted with 4K projectors and linked via a 100 Gb/s connection to the University of Bristol’s supercomputer to enable complex 3D data visualizations. This capability will support public science experiences and practical applications such as traffic management and air-quality modeling.
The same connectivity is being explored for healthcare use cases. High-bandwidth live video could allow paramedics to consult remotely with doctors in 4K, improving pre-hospital care or avoiding unnecessary hospital journeys, which in turn would free beds for patients who need them most.
Leaders of Bristol is Open emphasize that their aim is not simply to create a “smart city” for its own sake, but to build a livable, sustainable, and resilient urban environment. A range of public and private partners contribute expertise to make Bristol an open, programmable city where innovators can test new ideas on a real urban testbed.
(Image: Urban challenges faced worldwide)
Dejan Bojic, Director of Strategy & Solutions at NEC Corporation in EMEA, described the project as groundbreaking: “This initiative will use NEC’s SDN-enabled network technologies together with Bristol is Open’s SDN platform, developed by the University of Bristol, to create an open, dynamic, virtualised network that serves each traffic type according to its quality-of-service needs across Wi‑Fi, LTE, millimetre-wave and optical channels.”
Silver Spring Networks is deploying an RF-based mesh using city assets such as street lighting. Eric Dresselhuys, EVP of Sales and Global Development, explained that the commitment to open standards gives Bristol the flexibility to choose interoperable devices, software, and partners, while providing start-ups access to a global marketplace for their solutions.
A central design principle is future evolution: the City Network Operating System (NetOS) aims to be as open and extensible for cities as Android is for mobile devices. Bristol’s mayor, George Ferguson, has released around 200 open datasets, positioning the city among the most transparent in the world. These datasets, combined with historic records and live feeds, will help researchers and planners tackle challenges such as an ageing population, climate change, and food security by identifying patterns and testing solutions.
(Image: Data speeds compared by country)
Research and development partners connected to Bristol is Open will have access to at least 30 Gbps links, with higher capacities provided where needed. This level of performance is far beyond standard consumer or commercial offerings—many slices of the network will guarantee at least 100 Mbps, which already exceeds typical UK consumer speeds by a wide margin.
The University of Bristol’s High Performance Networks (HPN) lab is linked nationally and internationally through the UK’s National Dark Fibre Infrastructure Service (NDFIS), enabling close collaboration with research institutions and industry across Europe, the USA, Brazil and Japan.
Simeonidou explains the rationale for SDN: it makes the network technology-agnostic, interoperable, and programmable by users. As a city testbed, Bristol must support many concurrent users—researchers, developers and companies—so network slicing becomes essential. “We offer City-Experimentation-as-a-Service,” she says. “A developer submits a request and, depending on their needs, we allocate a slice of the network.”
(Image: Overview of the current infrastructure)
The HPN lab also hosts a network emulator that can reproduce another city’s infrastructure, allowing developers to test how applications would behave in different urban environments. “Emulated nodes run exactly the same traffic patterns as real nodes, so you can experience how your application would perform in a city like New York,” Simeonidou explains.
Creating an open, programmable city is an ambitious undertaking, and Bristol’s approach emphasizes collaboration between public institutions, industry partners and academic researchers. From our time with Bristol is Open, two lessons stand out: successful urban innovation depends on partnership and a shared commitment to improving lives, and building adaptable, data-driven cities is critical to meeting future urban challenges.
Do you think more cities should become programmable? Let us know in the comments.