Biography
Trevor Gibson - Smart City Leadership and Development Manager with Opportunity Peterborough, the city’s economic development company.
Trevor was part of the Peterborough team which successfully bid to be one of the UK’s four Future City Demonstrators funded by the Technology Strategy Board. He continues to help develop and deliver the resultant “Peterborough DNA” programme delivered jointly by Opportunity Peterborough and Peterborough City Council. He currently chairs the British Standards Institute (BSI) Smart City Co-ordinating Committee and is actively involved in the continuing development of BSI’s suite of Smart City Standards including PD 8100 (Smart Cities Overview), PAS 181 (Smart City Framework) and 182 (Smart City Concept Model). He also sits on the Smart Cities Institute.
Trevor has almost thirty years experience in the public sector, most recently as Director of Environment and Community Services at Peterborough City Council, where he was responsible for the strategic management of a wide range of front-line services including; environmental health, trading standards, licensing, development control, building control, transport and engineering, waste management, sports and leisure, heritage, arts and culture, city centre management, corporate resilience and tourism. Prior to that he held senior positions with Suffolk Coastal District Council and Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.
One strand running through Trevor’s entire career has been that of sustainability, a particular focus of Peterborough as it seeks to create the UK’s first Environment Capital. The city’s location in the East of England puts it in the very heart of one of the most water stressed areas in the UK. Two particular initiatives focus on this inherent and growing challenge:
- Water Efficiency in European Urban Areas (WE@EU) - this European funded project, led by Opportunity Peterborough, is creating an open European Platform for innovation in the area of water efficiency in urban areas. It does this by boosting transnational cooperation among research driven clusters in the UK, Israel, France, Malta and Spain.
- The Water Innovation Network (WIN) - a dynamic initiative bringing together the water supply chain and industry to find the solutions to transform today’s water industry. WIN is a free membership network that in partnership with Anglian Water provides unique support for innovation within the water supply chain.