What Could Sussex Solve with its Own Data, AI, Modelling and Your Ideas?

Our city runs on data most of us never think about: bus timetables, road networks, admissions figures, exam results, footfall. Combine them with today’s AI tools and you can see how a whole system works – and test what happens if you change it.

Adam Dennett is Professor of Urban Analytics at UCL and the 'Smart City' theme lead for the AI for Collective Intelligence National Research Hub (https://ai4ci.ac.uk/).

He has done exactly that. Over 5 months, building with Claude, he brought together sources like council admissions data, bus timetables and national attendance figures with 20 years of experience modelling urban systems.

The result is a simulation of how Brighton and Hove’s entire secondary school system works.

Why? The city faces a demographic crunch. Within ten years there won’t be enough children to sustain the current set of schools.

Getting to 2035 with a system that’s fair for everyone won’t be easy. Making decisions without understanding how the system works is like a quack doctor prescribing treatment without understanding the body.

The AI4CI hub is not about how AI will solve thorny problems for us, but it is about how AI tools can us find better answers and help support more of us to contribute to addressing challenges in our own communities or sectors.

Then we'll be asking you:
👉 Where else in Brighton, Hove & the wider Sussex area could data and AI help us model the options, and make data-driven decisions on how to make our city a better place to live and work?

You don't need to be technical, just someone who cares about this city 🫶.

We'll also have Simon Dixon from Inkie coming back to share the AI tech that has caught his eye recently. He'll explain how classifiers (like Jev) differ from traditional LLMs, and how he uses them in his coding setup… we may even get a quick demo 🙂

On the night:

Doors 6pm for 6.15 kick-off
💻 Tech spotlight: Classifiers (like Jev) and how they differ from LLMs
🌍 Data + AI – how we can find better answers to addressing challenges in our own communities or sectors
🔄 How we can model different scenarios for better local decision-making

• 💡 Your ideas on what problems we could solve across Sussex with data + AI

Who is it for?
This event is open to anyone curious about how AI can be used responsibly in the real world. No tech know-how needed.

📅 Wednesday 4 November
🕕 6pm–8.30pm

Come along to learn, connect and join the conversation around what responsible AI looks like when technology meets real community impact. ✨

Brighton AI \| Learn. Connect. Build.