City Science is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded funding through the PropTech Innovation Challenge to develop a Digital Uncertainty Log (DU-Log), an innovative tool designed to bring greater certainty and transparency to infrastructure planning and housing delivery across the UK.
Tackling Uncertainty in Housing Delivery
The PropTech Innovation Challenge, funded by MHCLG’s Digital Planning programme, supports digital solutions that accelerate the government’s home-building target and foster a new supply-side ecosystem in the property sector. City Science responded to a critical challenge posed by Geovation:
“How might we de-risk housing projects and unlock a surge in developer activity by giving developers and local planning authorities absolute certainty and radical transparency regarding existing and future infrastructure capacity?”
DU-Log addresses this by consolidating transport (and wider) infrastructure data into a single, version-controlled platform. By standardising records of schemes and their associated assumptions, such as probability, timescale, and project stage, DU-Log enables developers, local authorities, and infrastructure providers to make faster, more confident decisions.
City Science’s Role in Driving Innovation
Building on our established geospatial platform, Cadence, City Science is working with key partners, including England’s Economic Heartland (EEH) and Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), to co-design and pilot DU-Log in real planning environments. Over the coming months, our team will:
- Establish a data standard for infrastructure schemes.
- Digitise data collection, versioning, and sharing across local authorities, developers, and infrastructure providers.
- Provide transparency to reduce uncertainty, delays, and costs in housing delivery.
- Demonstrate measurable improvements in planning efficiency through a pilot programme.
Delivering Benefits Across the Housing Ecosystem
DU-Log is designed to create clear value for all stakeholders involved in infrastructure and housing delivery:
- For Local Planning Authorities: Faster, evidence-based site assessments and approvals, with reduced costs from manual data consolidation.
- For Developers: Greater certainty on infrastructure capacity and readiness, lowering investment risk and enabling more confident project initiation.
- For Strategic Transport Bodies & Infrastructure Providers: Standardised data inputs, improved coordination, and more effective pipeline management.
- For Government & Policy Stakeholders: A replicable national model to accelerate housing delivery and support net-zero aligned infrastructure planning.
Building Confidence in Infrastructure Planning
City Science is proud to lead this pioneering project, demonstrating how digital innovation can reduce risk, increase certainty, and accelerate housing and infrastructure development at both regional and national levels.
