BP Advanced Mobility worked with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge to explore the opportunities and barriers of quantum computing for application in smart cities.
The company
The group company is involved in all areas of the energy sector value chain reaching from oil exploration and refining to trading. In its role of a major market player in the energy sector, the company has strong interest in sustainability and technology innovation. Therefore, it conducts a variety of research and development projects in topics like renewable energies, mobility or digital and emerging technologies aiming to identify new opportunities for its business.
The challenge
In the Cambridge Grand Challenges industry-university research collaboration, the company explored the value of quantum computing for application in smart cities. An interesting focus area for the company is the future transport systems and data analysis in dynamic commuting communities. The unit of analysis was a city, independent from its regional location. The focus of this collaboration was the question:
“Which are the overall opportunities and barriers of quantum computing for application in smart cities?
The company aimed to gain insight to the relevant problems in the domain for smart cities that appear to lend themselves to quantum computing and to derive an initial list of potential projects and research that would be useful and enable further collaboration with the University of Cambridge.“
The company aimed to gain insight to the relevant problems in the domain for smart cities that appear to lend themselves to quantum computing and to derive an initial list of potential projects and research that would be useful and enable further collaboration with the University of Cambridge.
The roadmapping process
A half-day workshop was organised involving a team from the client, a team from the Cambridge ESRC DTP-IAA, the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction from the Centre for Digital Build Britain, and lead academics from different departments of the University of Cambridge who conduct research in relevant fields.
The first session was structured to gain insight to the relevant problems in the domain for smart cities that appear to lend themselves to quantum computing. The facilitated discussion between the academic and industrial participants helped to identify potential R&D collaboration opportunities between the company and the University of Cambridge.
Prioritisation and exploration of the identified opportunities formed the focus of the second part of the workshop, this included asking participants to populate templates for an overall roadmap as well as creating topic roadmaps for key priorities.
The results
The workshop started with a presentation of the relevant research from each academic participant followed by an explanation from different company departments of their challenges and needs. Through discussion, participants identified different collaboration ideas across short-term (from 2020), medium-term (2022-2023) and long-term (from 2024) timescales.
A list of possible collaborations was prioritised and the topic “Mass transport in urban areas” was selected for further exploration. In the final session, the vision and outcomes of the collaboration were outlined as well as the current state of the art and the scope.
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