A specially equipped “capture vehicle” packed with cameras, laser scanners and positioning technology will soon begin driving Jersey’s roads as part of a nearly £500,000 project to create a detailed digital map of the Island – including its internet signal.
The funding has been granted through the Impact Jersey ‘Innovation Programme’, which supports projects that turn technology-driven ideas into practical solutions.
Having noticed that current imagery is outdated and fragmented, the team behind IslandView are proposing to create a digital dataset of Jersey’s road network and built environment.
WHAT’S A DIGITAL TWIN?
Their 12-month project will involve delivering up-to-date high-resolution street-level imagery through a series of comprehensive surveys of the Island’s road network.
The team will use a specially equipped ‘Jersey Capture Vehicle’, which will also produce an independent data set showing current 4G and 5G coverage across the Island.
The work aims to improve evidence-based decision-making and planning, while reducing costs for the Island’s architecture, engineering and construction sectors.
It is also intended to support the visitor economy, increase transparency around telecom performance, and lay the groundwork for emerging technologies and infrastructure.
The team behind the project, which will get £487,000, are all originally from Jersey and bring specialist expertise gained off-island, including in the fields of robotics, hardware engineering and data science.
Gary Edwards, director at re.je – the business behind IslandView – said: “Jersey’s existing digital representation of its road and built environment is quite out of date.
“We’ve developed a specialist vehicle equipped with cameras, laser scanners and highly accurate positioning technologies that give us a modern, up-to-date data set.”
We’ve developed a specialist vehicle equipped with cameras, laser scanners and highly accurate positioning technologies that give us modern, up to date, data set
Gary Edwards
“The aim is to support future innovation on the Island and help position Jersey as an advanced jurisdiction for the development of emerging technologies such as AI and digital twins,” he added.
The project is one of the first two to have been awarded funding through Impact Jersey’s ‘Innovation Programme’ launched last year, alongside another aiming to detect heart failure earlier that was granted £225,000.
The ISLE HFpEF project aims to address the cause of half of heart failure cases – ‘preserved ejection fraction’ (HFpEF) – which is hard to diagnose and treat.
Statistics show that cardiovascular diseases – illnesses affecting the heart and blood vessels – accounted for 27% of deaths on the Island in 2024.
The project team will use a wearable-based digital monitoring system to help enable early detection of heart failure and provide ongoing monitoring of the patient’s reaction to treatment.
Aaron Henry, Cardiology Doctor at the Jersey General Hospital said it “presents an opportunity” for Jersey to “be a world leader” in digital health technologies.
Tony Moretta, CEO of Digital Jersey, said he was “really pleased” that the first grants through the programme had been approved.
