Throughout the Solihull metropolitan area, public sensors are being placed to measure air quality, light intensity, sound volume, heat, precipitation, wind, and mobile phone traffic to count pedestrians (without sacrificing privacy laws). The ultimate goal is to make the city a safer, more efficient, and cleaner place to live while attracting technical researchers and, rolling out in phases, to offer the city a new public utility.

This data based approach has been rolled out across other areas of the council's remit. Solihull have consulted with many unitary authorities around the UK to advise and partner in helping other authorities to improve team performance. When they looked at dozens of variables on team composition, they could see how a set of small improvements would add up. By looking at the number of members on a team, the time-zone spread, the relationship between workers, and other factors, the improvements ultimately added up to a 22% increase in productivity.