Transport technology company VivaCity is installing more than 200 sensors across the UK city of Nottingham to make it a smarter and more efficient places to live and work.

Across Nottingham, VivaCity is installing 219 sensors with a mix of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), traffic monitoring and smart signal control capabilities.

These sensors use artificial intelligence (AI) to gather accurate, detailed and anonymous data round the clock on transport modes, traffic flow and travel times, supporting decisions to help enhance the transport network and improve urban infrastructure.

The technology can identify each individual vehicle type, from heavy goods vehicles and coaches to bicycles and pedestrians. As the data are received in real time, this will increase the capacity to make rapid decisions to keep traffic moving freely around Nottingham.

The technology will also help the city understand how different transport mode volumes affect pollution levels. The sensors will be delivered in four parts with the first sensors being installed this month and the final sensors in November 2023.

The city’s first smart junction, which will be on the ring road at its junction with Aspley Lane, will use VivaCity sensors to make the traffic lights more reactive to traffic levels and help reduce waiting times. If it is successful, then it is intended that more smart junctions will be installed across the network.

The technology will be upgraded as functions are developed over the coming years. For example, the AI capability is being developed to identify many more vehicle types such as taxis, minibuses and mobility scooters.

“Our city needs the best, latest technology to help us in our fight to become carbon neutral by 2028,” said councillor Audra Wynter, Nottingham City Council’s portfolio holder for highways, transport and parks. “To help us to monitor traffic flow and analyse the behaviour of road users in the area, we’re looking forward to working with VivaCity to help make accurate decisions on future schemes and to reduce pollution in the heart of our city.”

All data are anonymous and people are not identifiable. These sensors have been developed using privacy-by-design principles to ensure personal data are never compromised.

As the data provided by the sensors are in real time, this will let network managers react to changes in the traffic quickly and efficiently, helping avoid congestion.

In the longer term, these sensors should help the city understand the road network in a level of detail that had not been possible before. Future local transport plans will draw on these datasets to help make changes to the road network. Residents, whether motorists or public transport users, should benefit from quicker and easier journeys.

Funding for the project cam from the UK government. In 2019, the government announced the Future Transport Zones (FTZ) fund. The fund objectives are to trial new and innovative mobility services, improve the integration of services, and increase the availability of real-time data. In 2020, the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed the Nottingham-Derby bid was successful in securing £16.7m funding over the next four years.

Due to impacts of Covid-19, the FTZ programme launch was paused by government and restarted in June 2020. The programme runs until June 2024.

The data will be fed into a new data hub to sit with other traffic datasets, such as car park occupancy and electric vehicle charging point locations and availability, which will be available to the public via open data.

Air quality monitors will be installed near VivaCity sensors on busy roads to see if there is a correlation between high levels of air pollution and road usage. If so, ways can then be devised to reduce pollution in these areas and help towards Nottingham’s target of being carbon neutral by 2028.