Connected Places Catapult is the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and places.
We provide impartial ‘innovation as a service’ for public bodies, businesses, and infrastructure providers to catalyse step-change improvements in the way people live, work and travel. We connect businesses and public sector leaders to cutting-edge research to spark innovation and grow new markets. We run technology demonstrators and SME accelerators to scale new solutions that drive growth, spread prosperity, and eliminate carbon. Digitalisation and decarbonisation of maritime and ports are key focus areas for Connected Places Catapult, having delivered the Department for Transport Transition to Smart Ports study in 2020 and working with port partners throughout the UK to establish Smart Port use cases. Ports and maritime have significant impacts to the UK economy and communities, both regionally and nationally, offering the potential to level up economies, lead the way in transport decarbonisation and stimulate cross-sector innovation. Connected Places Catapult has the skills to support UK innovators, researchers and stakeholders in maximising their potential impacts in the maritime sector and beyond, including:
- Systems and component level technical support, analysis and validation
- Innovation and procurement
- Regulatory and policy support
- Trials design, review and impacts analysis
- Business modelling and investment cases
- Data strategy, data science and software development
- Academic engagement and research exploitation
- International engagement and matchmaking
Connected Places Catapult has experience and expertise across transport and places domains, including autonomous systems, the built environment, decarbonisation and digitalisation. We work cross-sector to maximise the potential impacts of innovation.