The capabilities of Milton Keynes’ data hub will be expanded by BT to provide a data platform for the management of travel and transport in Manchester. It forms part of the two-year smart cities project, CityVerve.

John Davies, chief researcher for future business at BT, said: “One of BT’s roles in the project is to provide a data platform for the travel and transport theme.

“The platform will be based on the same technology as the MK:Smart data hub, but the project gives us the chance to further enhance our capability.”

Deployment of the Manchester data hub is scheduled for October and it will be developed over the duration of the project with the first prototypes expected to become available in summer 2017.