Funding for Innovation - Go Get It

Geomatics technologies were to the fore in several projects presented at The Issue Conference 2014: Sustainable Transport Technologies - Collaboration for Innovation conference at Loughborough University which focused on how to get funding for development of new technologies. But why weren’t the funders already aware of what geomatics can offer, asks Richard Groom?

When introducing new technology there is a well-known ‘chasm’ between the first adopters and wholesale acceptance by industry. There is a parallel ‘valley of death’ between research into a new technology and development of a commercial product. It is not quite the same thing, because in the latter, the cause of the valley of death is seen to be a funding gap between research, which is predomin­antly government-funded, and exploitation, which is privately-funded. This conference aimed at pointing the way through the valley of death, where so many projects have perished.

Hands up all those who think that new technology has to be funded out of company profits and borrowing from cautious banks. It need not be so. There is a wealth of EU and UK funding available to anyone (companies, govern­ment and third sector) for ‘innovation’ that takes new products to the market. If you don’t use it, when you struggle, others will take advantage.

Obtaining funding for ‘innovation’ is almost a business in its own right and, like successful tendering, getting your kids into a ‘good’ school and so on, you need to be in the know to succeed. One thing to realise, is that government is desperate to spend and some of the projects presented at this conference did not seem to be at the cutting edge of technology. Perhaps those assessing the applications knew no better and did not ask anyone who did. I am not advocating deliberately vying for funds for projects that do not deserve them, but for those who do have bona-fide ideas, the money is there. Go and get it!

The formula for a winning bid seems to be collaboration between a research body, an ambitious client (this may not necessarily be the end client, but an established supplier such as a consulting engineer), and an ambitious organisa­tion to put things together, probably an SME.

The research body is probably the organisation that can secure the cash. There’s no harm in knowing where it can come from and a brief overview revealed some sources. The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) deals with EU funding under Horizon 2020 and UK regional funding is another source. ESA’s IAP project has a pot of money for space applications. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships can provide academic expertise and 65% of the costs of development. Horizon 2020 has a pot of e79 bn to spend during the period 2014 – 2020.

GNSS featured in a number of  presentations but an overview of potential applications was presented by Mark Dumville of Nottingham Scientific Ltd. As interest grows in using GNSS for real-time mission-critical work, systems have to be resilient to loss of service and spoofing and this is an important area of research. One surprising statistic is that 6 to 7% of the EU GDP depends upon the US GPS system and its use has extended to almost every area of life, including emergency services, tracking of prisoners (helped by geofencing) and vulnerable people, tracking trains and buses, congestion charging and for agriculture. GNSS will be a major component in the internet of things.

Interesting but is it really new?

One organisation has taken advantage of TSB help and formed a partnership with a government entity (run by an ‘outsourcing company’) the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and a consultants Atkins to develop a ‘ground-breaking’ vehicle-mounted system to image railway infrastructure using laser scanning and photographic sensors mounted on a vehicle with GNSS and inertial motion sensors that can run along rail tracks. The cameras apparently use image-matching photogrammetric techniques developed by NPL to monitor the condition of tunnel walls using epochal surveys.

The system was developed to automate maintenance inspections for Network Rail. It can compute changes to the surface of tunnels between surveys and detects bulges, changes in the width of cracks and water ingress. Perhaps readers will think that, far from being innovative, this is well-established technology. Well, presumably not, because the organisation obtained funding to develop a demonstration vehicle. The project finished in January and only then was it demonstrated to Network Rail’s in-house geomatics expert. Perhaps these projects would produce better value for money if large government-funded organisations were to consult the experts they employ before the project is approved, rather than after it has finished. The company is now planning to provide a service to Network Rail to survey high-risk rail tunnels in the UK and also intends to sell its system overseas. Perhaps there are other geomatics companies that can provide competition.

Sometimes it appears that ignorance is a useful weapon. If you are working outside your area of expertise perhaps you think that it is acceptablecannot be expected not to know that the wheel has already been invented. Surveyors employ equipment that others see as toys and there is nothing more infectious than a boy with a new toy. If your client is large and bureaucratic enough it may well be that he has not thought to consult the experts within his own organisation.

This article was published in Geomatics World May/June 2014