Phil James

Phil James is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering at Newcastle University, director of the Newcastle Urban Observatory, the UK’s largest urban environmental monitoring programme and leads the UK National UK Urban Observatory Programme. His research is at the intersection of Engineering and Computer Science with a recent focus on IoT (the Internet of Things) and environmental monitoring. He leads the EPSRC funded CORONA (City Observatory Research platfOrm for iNnovation and Analytics) project and has a research portfolio of interdisciplinary research worth over £15m. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Earlier in 2019, Phil was part of the Newcastle team that won “Smart City of the Year” awarded in London by the Digital Leaders organisation. Newcastle was noted for its collaborative and innovative use of technology across the city to deliver services more efficiently and make life more liveable. The Newcastle Smart City Partnership aims to deliver better transport, cleaner air, more responsive local services and creating more independence for people in their own homes through the exploitation of big data and technology.

 

Phil’s TEDx Talk

Where Are All The Smart Cities?

While there’s been a lot of marketing hype around the concept of “smart cities”, actual progress is not entirely apparent. Newcastle, however, is making some very real strides forward and is at the forefront of using the Internet of Things (IoT) to enable the collection of urban data to understand the way cities work and ultimately provide better services and a more sustainable future.

This talk will cover the many challenges in the quest to becoming a Smart City but also look at the payoff that big urban data will provide in making a better city for all whilst also reducing our impact on the global climate crisis.