What is a Smart Place?

A smart place is an initiative to improve lives throughout our community. We are addressing the biggest challenges in our society by developing technological solutions for:

• health & social care
• mobility & the environment
• industry & logistics
• and other sectors across our area

Smart Place Aims

By facilitating the development of digital solutions, we aim to showcase BCP Council as being at the forefront of digital transformation. This is a long-term project to help businesses be more competitive and the community be more sustainable.

We are creating an open Smart Place ecosystem that will accelerate innovation in the BCP area, attracting businesses and investment to join this wonderful community. As part of showcasing BCP Council, we are presenting the work of Smart Place at the Smart City Live 2020 event, this year's virtual Smart City Expo World Congress.
Find out more about our participation in Smart City Live 2020.

Funded by the Dorset LEP, we are also looking to attract significant inward investment into the area with our Investment Plan. The plan includes assessments of business models, details of opportunities for investment and associated economic, social and health benefits.

Leading-edge digital connectivity

Reliable, high-speed digital connectivity, both fibre and wireless, allows private, public and voluntary sector organisations to be far more productive.

In addition, having good quality, affordable digital networks in place is a key foundation in realising the considerable potential benefits of a Smart Place.

Big Data – data analytics, machine learning and AI

Private, public and voluntary sector organisations along with private individuals need to share and utilise information securely and far more effectively in order to achieve major health, social, economic and environmental benefits.

Sharing data securely amongst agencies and individuals as part of a holistic Smart Place programme also unlocks the considerable capability of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

Data platform for enhanced and new services and applications

In order for private, public and voluntary sector organisations along with private individuals to make the most of combined and analysed data, there is the need to create a major Smart Place data platform upon which new services and applications can be developed, accessed and operated.