Staffordshire County Council and Amey, an infrastructure services and engineering company, are working with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to trial new mobility solutions for the county.
The organisations have been working together for the past two years, with the trials funded through the ADEPT Live Labs programme.
Working with Staffordshire County Council, the Connected Places Catapult and Keele University, Amey used funding from the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT) SMART Places Live Labs programme to create SIMULATE (Smart Infrastructure & Mobility Urban Laboratory and Test Environment).
SIMULATE is designed to connect technology from SMEs with real issues faced by the local authority.
The two main areas of focus were mobility and air quality. Following a series of workshops and a launch event, over 130 applications were received from SMEs with solutions to address these challenges.
Some 10 winners were selected and offered a trial period to showcase their solutions.
The SIMULATE programme saw trials of e-scooters, EV charging points, as well as living walls and clean air sensors, all of which provided data for infrastructure and planning decisions.
Giles Perkins, Live Labs programme director, said: “The confluence of mobility, climate change and air quality will continue to be a challenge right across the UK.
“The innovations and learnings from the Staffordshire Live Lab help drive the agenda forward as we move to a cleaner, decarbonised less impactful mobility system.
“Encouraging SME innovation has been at the centre of the Staffordshire approach providing a great blueprint for how we accelerate growth for those with the drive and ideas to deliver real change.”
The ADEPT SMART Places Live Labs programme was a two-year £22.9m project funded by the Department for Transport and supported by various project partners.
Nine local authorities, including Transport for West Midlands, worked on projects to help delivers solutions across mobility, transport, highways, maintenance, data, energy and communications.
