This was developed by Glasgow City Council with public, private, academic and voluntary sector partners across the city. The strategy will help tackle current and future challenges to the economy and a range of public services resulting from the pandemic. This included the rapid scaling up of infrastructure to support homeworking, a rapid adoption of Microsoft Teams to enable staff, the 3D printing of face visors for care staff and the deployment of a customer relationship management (CRM) system to support the Shielding operation.
In Glasgow’s schools, there has been a major upgrade of connectivity to all primary and secondary school’s telecommunications infrastructure, with over 52,000 iPads now delivered to Glasgow school children through the Connected Learning programme, with plans for the delivery of a remaining 25,000 being accelerated in response to the pandemic. Over 3,600 Wi-Fi hotspots have now been installed in schools, and Apple TV has been fitted in classrooms, allowing teachers and pupils to project wirelessly to digital screens.
A priority for the strategy is the focusing of digital investment to support economic and social recovery and renewal – improving digital skills and tackling digital exclusion, supporting and developing the city’s tech cluster and renewing a focus on open data, data analytics and open innovation.
Nearly 50% of Glasgow residents do not have access to a private vehicle. To support the city’s vaccine rollout, vulnerable people across Glasgow have been offered free environmentally friendly electric transport to their essential COVID-19 vaccination appointments, thanks to new electric buses funded by SP Energy Networks’ Green Economy Fund. The Green Economy Fund also directly funded Community Transport Glasgow’s five 100% electric minibuses and two fully electric people carriers, which have also been re-deployed alongside the council’s buses to assist the city’s elderly and vulnerable attending their vaccination appointments.
The Spaces for People project delivers temporary travel infrastructure that provides additional public space for walking, wheeling and cycling during COVID-19, with further measures coming soon. Spaces for People is widening footways at pinch points to facilitate safer pedestrian movement and easier access to shops, businesses, community facilities and public transport hubs. Temporary strategic cycling routes have also been implemented to help present active travel as a convenient and viable choice for essential journeys such as commuting, as well as for physical exercise. As we emerge from the pandemic, Glasgow City Council will look to maintain temporary Spaces for People measures during their transition to permanence or prior to their removal.
Local students from City of Glasgow College student have stepped forward to help during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
- Alistair Lee, a Business student joined a company set up specifically to produce hand sanitiser for key workers needing to protect themselves against COVID-19.
- Jasna Memic (pictured), a furniture restoration graduate who arrived in Scotland as a refugee is creating bespoke personal protective equipment for NHS workers in what she says is her chance to give back.
- Ruth Gordon, a second year HND Fitness, Health and Exercise student, is turning current lockdown and social distancing measures into a positive way of helping young people and her local community stay active.
- Mags Merson, a Reception & Information Services Assistant started making masks and wash bags for nurses’ uniforms to prevent contamination.
- City of Glasgow College is making up to 400 visor frames a day as part of a campaign with SWG3 and The Innovation School at Kelvinside Academy – Click here to read more.
A new online platform will empower people to share their suggestions for creating safer spaces in Glasgow for walking, cycling and wheeling, as COVID-19 restrictions are eased.
In collaboration with Sustrans Scotland, the council is launching the Commonplace Mapping Tool which will allow users to highlight ‘pinch points’ across the city centre and neighbourhoods, where emergency temporary measures such as pavement widening and new cycle lanes could be introduced to help people maintain physical distancing and suppress a resurgence of the virus.
The role of wireless communications in the current coronavirus pandemic has been analysed by experts including a University of the West of Scotland (UWS) academic.
5G wireless communications offer increased reliability and speed, which could enable a range of sectors to overcome some of the challenges presented by the pandemic and social distancing, such as at-home patient monitoring, remote surgery diagnosis, and contact tracing in the healthcare sector. This is especially important for those in remote areas.
School pupils in India are scaling new heights through an online course developed by a Glasgow-based English language tech specialist Klik2learn.
The project provides school teachers and 50 children with licences for Klik2Learn’s Digital Learning Hub, with the full course, ‘Journey 2 Basic Skills’, developing basic English language, literacy and numeracy skills.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health has been studied by researchers at the University of Strathclyde who found that one in seven Scottish adults are experiencing feelings of hopelessness. The research, led by the Mental Health Foundation Scotland, also found the same feeling in one quarter of unemployed people of young adults aged 18-24 and of people with pre-existing health conditions. However, these coincided with levels of anxiety and worry falling among Scottish adults as a whole. The data has been published as part of a major longitudinal study into mental health called Coronavirus: Mental Health and the Pandemic. It forms part of the UK-wide Mental Health in the Pandemic study, which started in mid-March and is led by the Mental Health Foundation, in partnership with the Universities of Cambridge, Swansea, Strathclyde and Belfast.
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