Nick Sturge Mbe

Connected Places Catapult is the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and place leadership. We provide impartial ‘innovation as a service’ for public bodies, businesses, and infrastructure providers to catalyse step-change improvements in the way people live, work and travel. We connect businesses and public sector leaders to cutting-edge research to spark innovation and grow new markets. We run technology demonstrators and SME accelerators to scale new solutions that drive growth, spread prosperity, and reduce carbon emissions.

The mission of UKSPA is to be the authoritative body on the planning, development and the creation of Science Parks and other innovation locations that are facilitating the development and management of innovative, high growth, knowledge-based organisations. A Science Park is a business support and technology transfer initiative that: encourages and supports the start up and incubation of innovation-led, high-growth, knowledge-based businesses.provides an environment where larger and international businesses can develop specific and close interactions with a particular centre of knowledge creation for their mutual benefit.has formal and operational links with centres of knowledge creation such as universities, higher education institutes and research organisations. THE HISTORY OF UKSPA Founded in 1984 by the managers of the eight Parks that then existed, UKSPA has gone from strength to strength. In the last forty years the number of Science Parks has grown significantly (from two in 1982 to around 150 in 2024). There is still a strong regional, and local focus to their establishment. What has continued to happen over the years is that many more UK Universities and centres of excellence in research have recognised the unstoppable trend, and inherent value of Science Park development and have created parks with associated management structures to help drive and technology up the value chain by supporting tenant companies across a wide range of activities. THE GROWTH OF UKSPA Over the course of the last forty years there has been continual growth in membership. In 2024 - the 40th Anniversary of the Association - over 140 locations were in membership, delivering facilities and support to over 6000 companies.

How cities work is changing. Developments in software, hardware and telecom networks are enabling more interaction between people and places and more machine-to-machine communication, creating an internet of things. Opening-up and making sense of this is giving citizens more ability to interact, work and play with their city. Using data sensors, smart city technologies will be able to respond in real-time to everyday events including congestion, waste management, entertainment events, e-democracy, energy supply and more. Together we are creating an open programmable city region. Bristol is home to research and development projects that use Bristol’s own digital infrastructure with: fibre in the ground; a mesh bouncing from lamppost to lamppost across the City; and a mile of experimental wireless connectivity along Harbourside. These networks are controlled in Software – creating a Software Defined Network – based on the OpenFlow standard. It uses Network Function Virtualisation to make the infrastructure super-fluid, sliceable, and usable by many different projects at once. Each project is managed by ’Bristol Is Open’ – a joint venture between the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council.