Who we are

Connected Places Catapult is the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and places.  

What are ‘Connected Places’?

 
Places thrive on their ability to connect people – to resources, opportunities and to each other.  

Throughout history, new technologies have enabled ever-increasing levels of physical, social and digital connectivity.  

• Physical connectivity – improved through the application of new materials and engineering techniques which resulted in bridges, utilities infrastructures, railways and skyscrapers.  

• Social connectivity – enriched by advances in urban design, civic infrastructure and innovations in governance systems.  

• Digital connectivity – exploded with successive waves of telecommunications technology, internet connected sensors, and increasingly powerful data processing.

The application of today’s emerging technologies to the places we live, work and play will enable even greater levels of connectivity, driving new services, productivity gains and prosperity. 

What We Offer

At Connected Places Catapult, 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.

What We Stand For

• We are human centred, solution-led

• We advocate for standards which enable interoperability, replicability and scale

• We work in partnership with others across the UK and beyond to provide access to R&D assets and deliver impact

• We support local economies and organisations by being present within them to embed and transfer innovation capabilities 

• We are globally connected in order to stimulate demand for UK innovations overseas and create opportunities for companies to expand globally

Our Focus: 6 Connected Places Catapult Domains

Our multi-disciplinary Connected Places Catapult team works across all aspects of place and understands the complex relationships between them. 

We recognise that places are made up of a set of closely related domains, each with their own rules, regulators, and market opportunities. 

Decisions or innovations in one of these domains invariably have impact on other. A mobility innovation like electric vehicles, for instance,  impacts the public space and critical infrastructure domains. The need to integrate charging facilities with the existing ones on the street assets and energy grids, both of which are managed by different parties, makes efforts to introduce innovation complex.  

At Connected Places Catapult, we operate across all six domains of place to develop opportunities for innovation within each and build bridges between them.