Participation: Digital Cities, Internet of Things, Architecture, Innovation, Start-ups

08.04.2013: Participation at the Urban Prototyping Festival:
Digital Cities, Internet of Things, Architecture, Innovation, Start-up.

Conference Day 1: Architecture and Technology in the Built Environment 

Venue:
Imperial College London
South Kensington Campus
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2AZ

Urban Prototyping Festival, held between the 8th April and 26th June 2013, will be hosting over 300 developers, architects, designers, artists and technology specialists investigating the role of digital technologies in creating smart sustainable cities.

UP London 2013 is a festival focused on Digital Innovation for a Sustainable Society. Bringing together technologists, academics, artists, governments and community groups, UP London 2013 explores how digital technologies can stimulate and sustain resilient environments, economies and communities. UP London 2013 is part of the global Urban Prototyping movement which explores how participatory design, art, and technology can improve cities. Each UP Festival uses a unique combination of events and strategies to address that city’s specific needs and circumstances, and prototype solutions for improvement. Previous festivals have been held in San Francisco and Singapore. In London in 2013, the festival focuses on sustainability and economic growth as key topics for digital cities and society. The festival engages citizens in creating digital artifacts as integral part of their cities, and connects citizen creators and their ideas with funders to jumpstart economic growth. UP London 2013 is hosted by Sustainable Society Network+, an RCUK-funded project lead by Imperial College. The Sustainable Society Network+ is releasing up to £100,000 for breakthrough ideas in the real world of digital technology and sustainability, with a focus on four core digital technologies: Internet of Things, Cloud, Mobile, Big Data/Analytics. We are gathering data that will be used to during our ‘makeathon’ and we have also lined up a series of exciting debates and art works that will expose, elaborate and allow citizens to understand these technologies in the context of the city and the impact it will have on their lives. As we ask citizens to become more reliant on decision-making made with data from sensor networks, UP London will also be holding a ‘crackathon’ in order to understand the vulnerabilities of these technologies. How can data from sensors be manipulated? Can the behavior of actuators be changed through malicious means?