AI could solve capacity problems faced by local planning authorities
Release Date: 04/10/2019
At Play In The Garden of Eden
If, as Joe believes, human beings are machines, why are we bothering to build artificial intelligence. If we succeed all we will have done is create new humans. And there is a well know, tried and tested way of making new humans which is more fun and much cheaper. Meanwhile it seems that the best definition of artificial intelligence that we have is anything that computers can't do right now. Whereas the definition of human stupidity is everything that humans can do right now. If this sounds harsh this is the week when Embassy staff of many nations are being withdrawn from Ukraine
info_outlineAt Play In The Garden of Eden
.… the machines are coming. I have seen the future and it does not look anything like the past or the present. We are as children now, innocents at play in the garden of Eden. Aurelia Pinchbeck - The Character of Thimbles - 2021 A podcast conversation about atrificial intelligence, documentaries, human stupidity, chess and the future of the human race. Joe Tibbetts is an Englishman, a documentary film-maker. He lives on the White Cliffs of Dover with a fine view of the past across the English Channel. For more than a decade he has played a daily game of chess against TChess Pro one of the...
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Madeleine Starr, Director of Business and Innovation at Carers UK explains how digital can help the UK’s 8.8 million unpaid carers - including the 5 million who juggle care with work
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A wide range of professionals from the world of planning and development convened at December’s MapLondon event to explore how cities might be made better through more data sharing and wider use of digital maps.
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Asmat Hussain, Corporate Director of Governance tells Rachael Tiffen of CIFAS what happened next after the High Court’s overturn of its 2014 mayoral election
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The Bridge - Shropshire Council’s immersive approach to presenting local data - is set to transform council and NHS commissioning
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Kate Hurr, Digital Manager at Cumbria County Council, describes colleagues’ enthusiasm for creating digital services in-house.
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Chief Operating Officer Jane West and transformation lead Susie Faulkner describe a process designed to bring staff and residents along with change.
info_outlineBrett Leahy, chief planner at Redbridge and Richard Sankey of Arcus Global explain how smarter planning will deliver a better planning service as well as greater job satisfaction for planners.
Planners don’t enter the profession to spend their life checking applications for extensions, and chief planners shouldn’t find themselves answering phone calls from the public chasing progress.
This is still happening in too many councils and it doesn’t need to. Application of AI to the planning process in Milton Keynes led to a reduction in planners’ live caseloads from 80 per officer to 25 per officer. The planning applications process is very much rules-based and aspects of it like validation (checking drawings and documents and loading them into a document management system) and checking against permitted development rules can be automated.
Planning professionals are then freed up to focus on place-shaping and engaging local populations with future development, including the provision of new, council-built housing.
Place shaping activity under the local planning framework is also well served by new technologies that through, for example, visualisation can give the public a much better idea of proposed future development.