What do cities, farms, factories and a stately home in Oxfordshire all have in common?
They all, to a greater or lesser extent, run on connected sensors.
The Blenheim Estate in Woodstock is hundreds of years old; covers 12,000 acres; and includes farmland, woodland, gardens, a palace and a lake. Land management is a challenge. That's why head of innovation David Green has invested in a network of more than 250 sensors; not only to track the changing conditions around the site, but to see how and when different areas are being used.
In this episode of Ctrl Alt Lead, Computing's IT leader podcast, David discusses how and why Blenheim collects and contextualises data; how he is using machine learning to identify anomalous results; and where AI comes into the estate's plans to improve the visitor experience.
Crucially for other IT leaders, David talks about the important lessons he's learned in rolling out a sensor network, and shares his advice for anyone looking to do similar. One of his top tips is:
"To go into too much detail with an IT strategy or an innovation strategy, I'd say, is probably the wrong thing [to do]. The landscape changes too fast. I would say get started, but very quickly. Avoid long, laborious strategies and work in a very agile, short, incremental method. Deploying things like sensors is a very low-cost thing to do. You can be sold a very, very expensive system that solves one problem, but may not help you in another way."
To access the full episode of Ctrl Alt Lead, watch the video or use the web player above, or find the podcast now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
