On measuring cities: data coverage, rankings, frameworks and the agents that keep them current.
27 carbon storage licences, the sites and complexes inside them, the areas offered for application, and the 478 depleted hydrocarbon fields that are the candidate stores.
Read article →The licensed waste estate in England and Wales, every closed landfill, 11,640 quarries, and the recycling, transfer, scrap and wastewater sites that make up Britain's materials economy.
Read article →Data centres, the legacy telephone exchange and street cabinet estate, and the towers, masts, antennas and satellite earth stations that carry the wireless side — from OpenStreetMap, with the caveats that implies.
Read article →National Parks, National Landscapes, 16,226 parcels of registered common land, Scotland's wild land areas, heritage coasts and the character areas that frame them — as boundaries rather than points.
Read article →SSSIs, Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas, Ramsar wetlands, National and Local Nature Reserves and Marine Conservation Zones — drawn as boundaries rather than points, with the nutrient neutrality catchments that now gate housing.
Read article →21,733 closed landfill sites, the permitted waste estate, 11,640 quarries, mining waste, onshore petroleum wells and the groundwater and drinking water sources underneath them.
Read article →40,567 of the highest-graded listed buildings, 32,281 scheduled monuments, the conservation areas that remove permitted development rights, and the 4,877 assets on the Heritage at Risk register.
Read article →Green belt, brownfield registers, article 4 directions, conservation areas and agricultural land classification — the designations that decide what may be built in England without asking, and where land is being offered forward.
Read article →The motorway and trunk A-road network as continuous routes, every numbered motorway junction, and the 2,676 rail stations, 976 metro stops, ferry terminals, airports and coach stations that connect to it.
Read article →Every UK renewable and storage project above 150 kW, the fossil and nuclear stations the renewables register cannot carry, the substations and licence areas behind them, and the offshore export cables that bring wind power to land.
Read article →A map of British water from catchment to coast — the river network with measured flow, every monitored storm overflow, the flood warning areas behind them, and the shoreline policy that decides which stretches of coast get defended and which do not.
Read article →Smart city frameworks are the structured checklists used to measure how smart, sustainable and resilient a city is. This guide compares the major frameworks — ISO 37120/37122/37123, NIST IES-City and U4SSC — and how to choose between them.
Read article →A smart city uses data and technology to run better for the people who live in it. What that actually means — the areas that matter, and how to tell real progress from marketing.
Read article →Traditional city surveys take months, cost a fortune and go out of date almost immediately. AI now keeps the picture of a city current all year round — and shows its sources.
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