Innovate UK funding to open source Bedrock (b6)
We received an Innovate UK FastStart Grant in October 2022 to open source the tooling we have been working on for the past few years.
Since we founded Diagonal, we have been building our own analysis engine tooling, to help us in the work we deliver with clients and partners creating a positive impact in cities and the built environment. We use data exploration and prototyping as part of research, and use prototyping to steer our research questions – so when we found existing tooling was too slow, we started to build our own engine so we could test our ideas faster, and without worrying about the size of data we wanted to explore. Internally, we started calling this tool Bedrock (b6). We will share more about b6 in the coming weeks and months- as we release it, test it, and gather feedback.
It’s important to us to make our tooling open. Our clients and partner organisations are local authorities, public agencies and their supply-partners, actors who invest in the built environment. We want to see more transparency and accountability in the analysis that informs these projects. By making our technology open, we hope to remove friction and barriers to a more holistic, broader review of investment decisions.
Diagonal is a steward owned company. We are legally bound to fulfil our purpose – improve the quality of life of those living in cities – above profit. We don’t believe that proprietary technology is in the best interest of our cities and towns. Local authorities shouldn’t be locked-in to vendors. If our work is no longer meeting our clients’ needs, we don’t want to be profiting from a vice.
We are delighted that Innovate UK saw the value in our analysis engine, our goals, and vision. If you want to join us as a preview-partner, to test b6 and give us feedback, let us know by signing up here.
