City-Insights and Network Rail - Liverpool Street Station project

24/08/15

City-Insights provides an easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS) that allows non-specialist users to create web apps published to a URL and accessed via QR, NFC and analogue codes. The City-Insights Platform accepts combinations of text, images, audio and video as well as providing downloadable resources such as pdf files.

The system is designed to integrate with both graphic and Google maps to make instant information trails around an internal or external location, with the option to share individual pages or sets of pages between trails on a create-once-use-often basis.

The system is particularly useful for giving public information about ongoing projects where it is important to give updates on a regular basis, e.g. incorporating time-lapse photography and alerts about upcoming phases of work which may cause inconvenience (it is used for example by construction and fit-out companies). It enables Liverpool Street station to be able to identify the messages and media he wishes to communicate to the public and have them in place and available within minutes. Material can also be created in advance and published and unpublished automatically.

The City-Insights approach does not replace the communication done by the main Network Rail website for the majority of Liverpool Street station's customer issues. What it does is to give the team on the ground a simple and flexible way to communicate information about an ongoing project which changes weekly/daily, and put this communication in a format that works instantly on smart devices. On the side it allows information links to be aggregated to reduce the need for rail customers to continuously switch between apps or websites.

The aim of this pilot project is to evaluate the benefits and the impact of creating this direct channel of communication between the station staff and the station users about day-to-day issues which affect them both.