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The Centre for Conscious Design

Humanising Technology | Human Centred Urban Innovation

October 24, 2018 – 6:00 pm
EST
CET
IST
ACT
Urban Innovation Centre, 1 Sekforde St, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0BE

Host Chapter / Organisers

Recordings (available to CCD Members)

Innovations in technology are increasingly allowing us to observe and analyse human activity on an unprecedented scale. The valuable data produced and used by such technology can potentially bridge the gap between the users of an environment and those wishing to improve its outputs. How will cities and property owners use this technology, and how can we make sure that it is used for a positive impact on our wellbeing? This event will highlight emerging technology focusing on the human experience, showcase those spearheading innovation, and encourage debate into their adoption and use.

Conscious Cities and Future Cities Catapult will host a series of short talks and a showcase of companies in the field.

Professor of Connected Environments in The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London and member of the Smart London Board. Duncan’s research focuses on how emerging technologies such as connected sensors and cognitive computing can augment our understanding of the built and natural environment. A Chartered Engineer with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Vision from UCL. A constant work thread of his work has been exploring how the internet and the physical world will continue to merge.

Before joining Future Cities Catapult, Sam worked at Cabinet Office, first in the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit, leading projects on health and social care reform, and latterly as senior adviser to the Cabinet Secretary, future-proofing policy (particularly housing) and encouraging the adoption of new technologies to tackle long-standing public service challenges.

Priya Prakash is designer-founder of London based award-winning D4SC – Design for Social Change Ltd -The applied urban innovation studio develops collaborative products and services combining human and machine intelligence to co-create smarter cities with people.

Changify #SmarterStreets D4SC’s intelligent people- powered decision making platform to improve public infrastructure got awarded by Innovate UK to pilot in Plymouth with Amey Ferrovial. It resulted in reducing average road inspection costs by 22%, increasing citizen satisfaction and contractor responsiveness by 19.8% and is being scaled across UK and Asia. Prakash is on ‘Tech City Insider 100’, IBM’s People for Smarter Cities and featured in FT, Sunday Times, BBC, Wired, Guardian and the Queen’s 2017 Honours list for award winning work in Chinese smart cities using data to improve public safety.

Prior to D4SC, Priya was Head of Mobile Phone User Experience at Nokia where she led the global design team to launch affordable smart phones – Nokia Asha in 144 countries. At BBC, she was lead-designer and co-inventor of iPlayer with joint patents.

Vanessa is passionate about shaping the future of cities to improve everyone’s work and life experience. Working at the intersection of cities and technology, she founded District Technologies, a community and smart building platform for large commercial or residential portfolios that helps owners save time and money. Prior to District, having written her masters thesis at Oxford University on “Understanding the DNA of Strong Entrepreneurial Hubs”, she took her theory into practice by building large coworking campuses (Factory Berlin and Interchange London for Market-Tech). District helps landlords move from “rent” to “relationship” through a best-in-class, artificial intelligence platform and mobile app that connects users to the things they love in and around buildings.

Dr Henry Chan is a project finance and evaluation expert, with 15 years of experience across the entire urban/infrastructure development lifecycle, from planning to construction management. His past projects cover multiple sectors and regions, including urban regeneration in China, underground metro in Brazil, and smart waste management in London. Currently, he is the Impact Assessment Team lead at Future Cities Catapult, a government-sponsored centre to advance the development of urban innovations. The team applies UK and international best practices to assess the economic, environmental, and social impacts of innovative solutions involving unproven technologies. Before joining Future Cities Catapult, Henry was a senior consultant and manager at Arup’s Transaction Advice and City Economics teams in San Francisco and London. His passion is to integrate technology into the built environment to improve everyday life and create a more sustainable future. He holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University.

Savannah de Savary is the Founder and CEO of Built-ID. After graduating from the University of Oxford in 2013, Savannah joined Thor Equities, where she managed NYC real estate development projects. In June 2015 she founded Built-ID, a proptech platform that showcases the built environment projects of today and transforms community engagement to better shape the projects of tomorrow.

Savannah won “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” at the Property Awards and was voted Property Week’s ‘Power 100: Top 20 Ones to Watch’ and one of the Top 20 Proptech influencers in a poll by the UK Proptech Association. She is also a regular columnist for Property Week and sits on the Oxford University Real Estate Society’s committee.