FEATURE SENSORS & SENSOR SYSTEMS
WELCOME TO THE SMART CITY
Jurgen Hase looks at how machine-to-machine communications is being deployed and used around the world
T
raffic chaos and smog are challenges that cities need to solve, but how are
they to go about it? Due to much larger populations and the structures they require, cities are confronting a myriad of challenges as a result of accelerating urbanisation. Every area of municipal administration faces requirements intended to ensure more sustainable urban habitats, economically and ecologically, in the long term. In response cities are using the Smart
City concept to combat traffic gridlock and atmospheric pollution. Take Pisa, for example. If you were looking for somewhere to park in the Italian city’s historic city centre, you used to need patience, time and strong nerves. Parking spaces are few and far between in the narrow streets and traffic throughout the city suffers as a consequence. In Pisa, motorists looking for a parking
space will in future be helped by a sensor- assisted parking guidance system. Ultrasonic sensors register at a distance of between 5 cm and 100 cm whether parking spaces are vacant or occupied and relay this information via three mobile network-based gateways to the city’s IT infrastructure. Pisa is currently testing the system in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom for 75 parking spaces at the Piazza Carrara on the bank of the River Arno. If cities like Pisa use the solution comprehensively, they will be able to monitor all of their managed parking spaces all of the time as well as reduce unnecessary traffic and CO2 emissions. Machine-to-machine communication,
or M2M for short, is an important technical basis. What experts mean by
18 SUMMER 2014 | IRISH MANUFACTURING
M2M is the automatic data interchange among devices or between devices and a control centre. Cars “talk” with traffic lights, parking lots, road signs and other vehicles. Sensors in dustbins alert the refuse disposal when they need emptying. In the future, more and more objects and places will communicate with each other and merge with the Internet of Things. Machina Research analysts anticipate an
increase in the number of M2M connections from 72 million at the end of 2012 to 747 million in 2020 in the Smart City & Public Transport segment. Annual sales revenue is expected to treble to £17.5bn over this period. State subsidies could drive the market further forward and European Union has recognised the importance of the subject and placed it on its Digital Agenda for Europe. Horizon 2020, the EU’s framework program for research and innovation, has earmarked nearly £66 billion in further funding for projects of this kind between 2014 and 2020. Along with parking guidance systems,
the market offers other Smart City solutions. Cities can reduce their CO2 emissions for example by smart management of their street lighting. Street lighting currently accounts for more than 40 per cent of local authorities’ energy bills. Remote management solutions based on M2M promise to remedy this state of affairs on both the ecological and the economic level. Most of a Smart City’s remote
management solutions communicate in much the same way as parking management solutions - via gateways that are connected to the city’s server infrastructure. Deutsche Telekom’s Street
According to figures the number of city dwellers is expected to increase to 6.25 billion by 2050. So how will cities ensure more sustainable urban habitats?
Lighting Management package for example uses lean communication protocols like the IPv6 over Low-power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN). The upstream devices in the lamps serve as nodes in an IPv6 mesh network. As the street lighting’s IPv6 mesh network is based entirely on open standards, other Smart City applications like parking spaces, charging points for battery-powered vehicles and parking meters can use it as infrastructure too. Lampposts are ideal as mainstays of an application-agnostic multifunctional network. The city can manage all applications
via a cloud-based Web portal. In the case of street lighting, the portal enables the authorities to monitor remotely the status of all street lamps and to program their lighting behaviour. Financing is one of the greatest
challenges that Smart City solutions face and new business models are needed to make a comprehensive launch of Smart City solutions affordable. That is why many mobile network operators and larger IT service providers offer their Smart City solutions as a service. Instead of having to invest heavily upfront, cities are supplied with the entire solution for a monthly fee that is based on the number of devices connected. Technically, the Smart City manager
must help ensure that solutions are characterised by flexibility, a large number of possible configurations and a future-oriented architecture. As soon as a wide range of objects are able to communicate with each other without difficulty in a city, the next question will be how the connected ecosystem can be managed and automated smartly to the benefit of the general public. That opens up an entirely new market for software manufacturers.
Deutsche Telekom
www.telekom.com Enter 204
/ IRISHMANUFACTURING
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32