Lighthouse City Nantes is an excellent example on how to use “design thinking” to develop new services based on data. Our colleague, Guillaume Chanson, from Nantes Metropole, is describing the approach: “From the outset having the knowledge of existing data such as sources, format, systems, licenses and so forth is essential. We, in Nantes, recognise the need to work with end-users in a heuristic and iterative approach on their problems, expectations as well as what to do with the data and for what benefit. For us, this includes simple business intelligence, we simplify one use case to a set of KPIs. Secondly, we work with a minimum viable product (MVP) and users' approbation to validate use cases and the third aspect is time and feedbacks, to increase the “cleverness” of use cases.
Nantes approach
The work currently under development is involving progressively more people in their respective fields (energy, mobility...) with a view to become more transversal. Through the Energy DataLab developed by Enedis, electrical consumptions of public building and public lighting installations were opened to a selection of stakeholders in 2017. This allowed the Nantes team to develop two specific electrical data-driven use cases (read more about here). In addition, the team has been able to identify new services by crossing and analysing data and exchanging with technical departments.
One of them is already in a trial phase in partnership with Enedis. It is the failure detection of public lighting. By monitoring the daily electrical consumption curves of public lighting equipments, Enedis is able to signal when a failure happens, i.e. when the consumption drops, which facilitates the maintenance of the equipment.
Another data use case is under development in the urban platform developed by Engie and Nantes Metropole. It deals with contract power optimisation. With the development of LEDs for public lighting, power consumption will decrease and electricity contracts would need to be adapted accordingly. The urban platform will make it possible to compare contract powers with actual electrical consumptions in an automated and comprehensive process, which will allow Nantes to adjust its electrical contracts. This will generate important financial saving for the municipality.
Design thinking, innovative and creative data handling, crossing expertise from different internal departments and partners – are just another example of the exciting work happening in Lighthouse City Nantes.
Data helps people
