About Us

innovate->incubate->accelerate

The Greenhouse method uses heuristic structured thinking that allows for the easy engagement of participants in developing solutions. The approach has successfully been used to for instance, innovate new business growth for a city, and create a programme of innovations for a city’s critical industrial partner.

Urban DNA has developed a comprehensive city leadership framework, and built associations with leading experts and practical academics in order to support the assessment and development of a strong leadership model.

Our approach takes an honest assessment together with the city, typically based one of our proven partner evaluation frameworks. This takes full recognition of the foundations that a city will have put in place in terms of vision, strategy, and plans. Following this a roadmap is developed as a collaborative exercise certainly within the city leadership group, and preferably involving more of the key stakeholders. The resulting visual roadmap aligns the various initiatives that a city needs to put in place to the overall city context, and enables easy communications and monitoring at all levels.

We have aligned a trusted group of partners to offer a progressive approach to help cities be more resilient, through (i) an expert process to identify and assess risks and establish protocols for mitigation (ii) visualise key information on priority assets (iii) model higher risk events to deal with system interdependencies, and (iv) build technical solutions to manage critical systems from edge-to-edge in real time. In short, a step-wise process to modernise city resilience and build confidence.

Cities hold vast quantities of data, and the potential to exploit it is enormous. The challenge is in knowing where to focus, which actors to engage, and what business models to apply. A data strategy is a sensible place to start, in order to determine how best to connect the city’s goals to a modern way of collecting, analysing, and operationalising data.   

The value of urban assets is vast, yet their data is locked up in fragmented silos. A modern approach to managing assets is a foundation stone for any aspiring smart city. Our approach assesses the city’s approach to managing assets; from which we develop a clear forward pathway. We also bring the ‘city data cube’ concept to manage the progressive migration of fragmented core asset data to a publicly managed trusted source. This allows the city to better exploit its asset management applications.

How does a city best manage the flow of people (and goods) in and out of the city on a daily basis? The current system of single mode management needs to progress to multi-mode real time optimisation. Something that does not happen in one shot! We help develop a realistic integrated route map that includes the development of ‘urban hub’ as proof of concepts within the city for a new model of urban mobility.

The ‘Humble Lamppost’ provides an ideal means for cities to start their smart journey. Typically cities own and operate inefficient lighting systems, where the scope exists for very significant energy and operational savings, and GHG improvements. Yet too many cities deal with this individually. We have launched a commitment under the EC smart city partnership (EIP SCC) to work with cities, industry and funders to put a million smart lampposts across European cities. Join the movement!