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NETWORK / 36 / JUNE 2016 A city famed for its quirky sense of identity, commitment to local values and strong council leadership, Bristol has a number of smart city ambi- tions. It was named European Green Capital in 2015, and this title spurred on a number of energy-related projects in the city, o-en with a strong com- munity ethos. Much of Bristol's smart city strategy is founded in the Bristol is Open project, and run by the Bristol Futures team with strong backing from the mayor. However, there are other groups in the Bristol city region working on strategies to accelerate community energy engagement and smart energy technology uptake. An example is the Bristol Smart Energy City Collaboration, led by the Centre for Sustainable Energy. Although Bristol is among the most affluent cities in the UK, it also suffers from notable social inequality and therefore many of its city energy enter- prises are targeted at assisting the fuel poor and improving energy efficiency. Key smart infrastructure/ energy initiatives and mile- stones in Bristol include: u Work on the setup of a "city operating system" that will enable machine-to-machine communications across the city using a so-ware-defined network to improve managea- bility, integration and accessi- bility. Using an SDN allows the project to integrate multiple networking technologies in a single management platform. There are also a range of other data-led initiatives to improve city infrastructure planning. u The Bristol Smart Energy City Collaboration is among the most important of Bristol's ener- gy-related initiatives and brings together a cross-disciplinary group of collaborators to set out a roadmap to achieve Bristol's smart energy ambitions. West- ern Power Distribution is a key player, alongside Arup, Bristol City Council and the University of Bristol. At the end of 2015, the Bristol Smart Energy City Collaboration published a report summarising findings from its first year of operation. S m a r t c i t y t e c h There are a range of core technologies (or suites of technologies) being applied to further smart city energy ambitions; among them microgrids, power system analytics and simulation. Why? "A microgrid could enable a smart city to be seamlessly 'islanded' from the main grid when needed, for example, during periods of peak power grid usage, or during a primary power grid failure. In this mode, the microgrid isolates its local generation and loads from a faulty grid and operates indepen- dently for prolonged periods." DAvID HUgHEs, mARKETINg AND sAlEs DIREcTOR, ABB POWER gRIDs DIvIsION "The demand to take proactive action rather than simply reacting to events after they happen requires intelligent applications to provide real-time predictive power system simulation, optimisation and automation. Therefore, predictive model-driven power- management systems are essential to deliver enhanced reliability, energy and cost-efficiency, and environmental benefits to the operation of the smart cities." sHERvIN sHOKOOH, cHIEf OPERATINg OffIcER, ETAP "Britain has £411 billion of infra- structure projects in the pipeline, 64% of which will be funded by the private sector. Using shared 3D experiences to simulate cities can reveal potential problems and solutions that may not be seen by any other means. Overlaying data reveals new views, making it pos- sible to actually predict events and their outcomes." sTEPHEN cHADWIcK, mANAgINg DIREcTOR, DAssAUlT sysTèmEs EURONORTH Bristol