TECHNOLOGY FOCUS INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE
An illuminating discussion I
James Benson on the importance of intelligent infrastructure for the ultimate intelligent city
t is becoming increasingly clear that intelligent cities are the way of the future, and digital capabilities the way to address many of the inherent problems growing cities face. Whether
your municipality is striving for more efficient asset manage- ment, greater citizen safety, improved traffic flow or parking optimization, digital connectivity can help. One of the first things to decide, however, is how you will gather and effectively ana- lyze the real-time data necessary to make informed decisions and drive outcomes. Developing a sensor-rich network for an Intelligent City is a
great place to start, but depending on how you tackle it, it can be a major undertaking that involves challenges related to cost, power, communications and physical structures. What if you could pick and choose from dozens of sensors and
software applications that provide data on traffic flow, parking management, environmental conditions, transit vehicle location, fire or crime detection, and efficiently manage them? Imagine if you could disperse those solutions evenly across
an entire city, with easy installation against infrastructure that’s already in place? Suddenly, creating the digital framework for an Intelligent City seems a bit less daunting. The best part? It is totally feasible.
CONNECTED CANADA SUPPLEMENT 14
LIGHTING: THE UBIQUITOUS PATH TO INTELLIGENT URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE Deploying a city-wide communications and sensor network is crucial to creating the ultimate intelligent city, and many munici- pal planners are realizing that they already have the foundation laid in the form of streetlights. Efficient LED streetlights, to be exact. LED fixtures can be fitted with outdoor wireless control systems that allow the streetlights to communicate with one another, relaying information from lamppost to lamppost, and eventually across entire cities. The same wireless technology that is connecting these LED
streetlights to optimize their lighting functionality is laying the groundwork for much broader communications networks that can serve as the nervous system for intelligent cities. Why? For one, lighting is everywhere. It forms a ubiquitous
network for capturing and transmitting data from city streets to high-rise offices to retail stores. In the US alone, there are about 327 million smartphones compared to 7 billion light fixtures. In terms of fixed physical infrastructure, no other technology plat- form compares to the pervasive nature of lighting. That’s why the potential to piggyback intelligent, connected solutions onto lighting platforms is so big.
www.thinkinghighways.com
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