Funding competition Meridian 2: connected vehicles data exchange
UK businesses or research and technology organisations can apply for a share of up to £5 million to create the world’s best connected vehicles data exchange or trading platform.
- Competition opens: Monday 4 June 2018
- Registration closes: Wednesday 29 August 2018 12:00pm
This competition is now closed.
Competition sections
Description
The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) in partnership with Meridian Mobility and Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £5 million in a single project. This is to develop one or more platforms for the exchange of connected vehicle data.
The aim is to create the world’s most effective CAV testing ecosystem. The project will facilitate the exchange of data, to test, develop, demonstrate and exploit CAV opportunities. The platform should be adaptable to cope with increasing volumes and new types of data formats which are accessible and appropriate for users.
CCAV expects to support one project. Preference is given to projects that prove they can deliver operational facilities that complement or build on existing facilities within the UK CAV eco system. Projects will be supported through investment aid for research infrastructures. This is a type of state aid that allows grant funding to support the construction or upgrade of research facilities.
If your project size falls outside of our scope, contact us before you apply.
To help establish the UK CAV development ecosystem rapidly, this competition is being run in parallel with Meridian 3: autonomous highway, rural and parking test facilities, which opens and closes on the same dates.Funding type
Grant
Project size
Your project’s total costs should be up to £10 million. Projects are expected to start by March 2019 and be fully operational in 12 months.
Who can apply
To be eligible for funding you must:
- be a UK based business, academic, charity, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
- carry out your project work in the UK
- commit to exploit the results from the UK
- work in collaboration with others (businesses, research base or third sector)
The lead organisation must claim funding through this competition. You should make it clear why the lead is the most appropriate organisation to lead the project. No single organisation should have more than 70% of the costs.
Projects may include partners that do not receive any funding (for example, non-UK businesses). Their costs will count towards the total project costs but they will not count as collaborators.Funding
CCAV have allocated up to £5 million to fund one infrastructure project in this competition.
You may apply for funding support of:
- up to 50% of your eligible project costs if you are a business of any size
- up to 100% of your eligible project costs if you are a non-profit distributing research organisation
Your project must have:
- at least a 30% industry contribution to the initial investment
- at least a 50% industry contribution up to 10 years from the start of operation
You must carry out economic activity and track the use of assets funded through this project. Teams must supply Innovate UK, CCAV and Meridian Mobility with regular updates through their monitoring meetings.
Your project must have overall match funding from industry. If some project partners are grant funded above 50%, other partners must provide non-government investment in the facility. This does not have to happen during the project, but must be evident within 10 years from the start of operation of the facility. The overall grant funding must not exceed 70% of the eligible costs at the end of the project. See the guidance for applicants for an example.
All collaborators on your project must contribute 4% of the value of grant received to the running costs of Meridian Mobility. This is not a claimable cost. Further details can be found in the guidance for applicants.
State aid
This competition uses a different state aid scheme from normal Innovate UK competitions. Your project is expected to focus on ‘investment aid for research infrastructures’.
Support given for construction or upgrade of research infrastructures that perform economic activities is considered state aid (please see page 41 of this document).
Your proposal
The aim of the Meridian competitions is to continue to create the world’s most effective CAV testing ‘ecosystem’.
Your proposal must support the sharing and trading of road transportation data generated by infrastructure, connected or autonomous vehicles or third parties. It must speed up the development and realise the benefits of connected and autonomous vehicles.
Meridian Mobility, CCAV and Innovate UK wish to establish an ‘ecosystem’ of projects to work together and with existing projects, which will set the UK’s facilities apart from others.
Your project must be globally significant and allow for:
- usage of scalable systems to collect or access, process and share data with users with appropriate remuneration
- development of sustainable business processes and models to improve the accessibility and availability of infrastructure and connected vehicle data
- processing data whilst protecting privacy, quality and intellectual property
Projects should:
- demonstrate routes to commercial viability and sustainable business models
- demonstrate best practice in terms of data ethics, security and privacy, including dealing with anonymisation and complying with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- demonstrate the use of cutting edge technology, such as blockchain
- generate and/or use real world data
- be demonstrably representative of the target environment in the UK, and other appropriate target CAV markets
- have available suitable hardware to develop and demonstrate the platforms and services that will support CAV deployment
- where applicable, demonstrate consultation and planning with road owner operators
- be able to contribute to a CAV data working group organised by Meridian that will inform and influence policy and standards
- support and encourage integration and collaboration across the wider UK CAV ecosystem
Example customers could include:
- cities and transport authorities understanding how they can transfer from current transport models to autonomy and mobility as a service which optimises transport services
- organisations improving road transportation by reporting on or reducing congestion
- logistics and transport companies
- CAV manufacturers developing and validating their devices and vehicles
- data aggregators such as insurance and telecommunication companies wanting to provide and obtain additional business value from their data
- mobility-as-a-service companies testing new business models
- SMEs testing the ideas behind CAV technology
- cybersecurity companies wanting to develop new security products
- simulation or data analysis companies
- organisations engaged in developing virtual safety testing and validation systems
Your project must provide core infrastructure that can support a variety of use cases to collect, store and distribute data. It must be ‘future proofed’ as far as possible.
Your proposal must include data exchange scenarios supported by a business model. Explain how each data platform (if there are several) will facilitate as many transaction scenarios as possible. We will prefer facilities that support ultra-low emission vehicle (ULEV) compatibility. Preference will be given to proposals that build upon existing data facilities and datasets.
Meridian Mobility, Innovate UK and CCAV will strategically review the proposals. You must work with Meridian Mobility as part of joint governance of the UK CAV Testbed ecosystem during the build phase and the lifetime of the facility.
Project business plans and personnel
Your project must submit a collaboration agreement and demonstrate good value for money. Projects must sign up to the Meridian Mobility Charter detailed in the guidance for applicants.
Your project must agree to work with Meridian Mobility to deliver a joined up group of UK testing facilities. Each funded facility will be expected to work as part of the UK CAV test ecosystem in partnership with Meridian Mobility.
We prefer facilities that support vital CAV technologies with cross-sector applicability, for example agriculture, public transport or drones. Your application must demonstrate how the facility is ‘customer friendly’ for all, including international customers.
Projects will be judged on their business model and must have a realistic plan for creating and committing to a long-term operational facility. Your business model must include marketing, operation and maintenance for at least 10 years beyond the end of the initial investment period of the project. Your completed facilities must operate commercially, with users paying a market rate. They must be open to several users on a transparent and non-discriminatory basis, including SMEs.
Your proposals must include a schedule detailing milestone costs and what public investment you are seeking.
Data management and IT
The facility must deploy protective security (cyber, physical, and personnel). It must use consistent and secure data management and communication tools and processes.
Proposals should detail which data and technology standards they have chosen and why. Justification could include that it matches national or international standards, or other industry facilities and this should be evidenced. You must also show how you will obtain any appropriate licences or approvals for the communications you need.
Project types
We will fund investment aid for research infrastructure projects only.
Projects we will not fund
In this competition, we are not funding:
- construction of a commodity data centre
- projects that significantly replicate existing facilities already available in the UK
- industrial research, experimental development or feasibility study projects
- projects which focus on synthetic data
- projects not focused on road transportation
- projects focused on confidential vehicle test data
- 4 June 2018
- Competition opens
- 11 June 2018
- Applicant briefing event.
- 29 August 2018 12:00pm
- Registration closes
- 5 September 2018 12:00pm
- Competition closes
- 21 September 2018
- Invite to interview.
- 15 October 2018
- Interview panel.
- 16 October 2018
- Interview panel.
- 17 October 2018
- Interview panel.
- 18 October 2018
- Interview panel.
- 9 November 2018
- Applicants notified
Before you start
Please read the general guidance for applicants. It will help your chances of submitting a quality application.
To apply:
- register online using the green button
- read the guidance for applicants for this competition
- consider attending one of the briefing events listed in ‘Dates’
- complete and upload your online application to our secure server
We will not accept late submissions. Your application is confidential.
External, independent experts will assess the quality your application. We will then select the projects to fund, building a portfolio of projects that:
- are high quality
- address the range of themes as described in the scope
- represent the potential for return on investment for the company and the UK
Subject to meeting the quality threshold, we reserve the right to manage the portfolio to achieve the correct balance of projects and funding.
Please use Microsoft Word. If you use Google Docs or any other open source software your application will be ineligible.
Background and further information
The Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) is a joint policy unit set up by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Department for Transport. CCAV was established to help ensure that the UK is a world leader in developing and testing connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).
CCAV will enable the government to create this policy fast enough for rapidly developing technology. Our aim is to maximise its economic and social benefits without compromising safety, security or privacy.
We are providing over £250 million in funding, matched by industry, to position the UK at the forefront of CAV research, development and use. This will contribute to UK economic growth and help industry to develop safe, efficient systems for moving goods and helping people get around.
Meridian has been established by government and industry to support the integration and co-ordination of UK CAV development facilities and speed up the UK’s emerging CAV sector, Meridian will invest in projects that foster a culture of open innovation, bringing together the best of business and government to deliver cutting edge CAV development infrastructure. Meridian will focus on the most important areas of UK capability, including validation, connected environments, data, cyber security and new service development.
This competition and the Meridian 3 competition build on the projects funded in 2017 as part of Meridian 1 (which was known as Connected and autonomous vehicles test bed, at the time).
If you need more information, contact the competition helpline on 0300 321 4357 or email us at support@innovateuk.gov.ukNeed help with this service? Contact us