Smart City
the Road to Sustainable Eco System
Anish PK Senior Consultant
IoT for Buildings
Originally Published
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August 2019 |
BTL Mark: Resolve interoperability issues & increase buyer confidence |
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Smart City the Road to Sustainable Eco System |
Anish PK Senior Consultant IoT for Buildings Originally Published |
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What is a Smart City?
The
Smart City is no longer a concept but a reality
now. Yes, it’s already up and running in many major cities around the
world on different levels.
Smart City is an ICT enabled Digital Environment where all the major
services & establishments are digitalized and connected. They
work/operate together to create a safe, secure, clean & efficient
planet for the residents and guests of that city.
With the exponential growth in IoT devices & IoT platform,
long-range transmission protocols/mediums; more and more devices,
equipment,
services are getting connected and communicating each other thereby
making the Smart City concept a reality.
The network infrastructure is one of the major requirement for having
high-speed & huge volume of data transmission and there by
accomplishing the smart city solution. The upcoming 5G cellular network
and
high speed fiber optics based connectivity will help the smart city
solutions to get mature and more feature rich in the coming days.
Also, the various data & application platforms which can handle
this large amount of data from different sources and in different
formats. These platforms are capable of standardizing these data and
run analytics to derive near real-time actionable insights.
These platforms can be hosted in cloud/on-premise data storage
facilities according to their respective technical & client
requirement. These platforms are also providing user interfaces from
where the intended citizen/user can access the information and utilize
it as per his needs.
At the same time there are many challenges like adopting open &
scalable platform, data security, vendor dependency, customization,
regulations etc. are affecting the smart city policymakers to choose
the right provider from the multiple smart city & IoT platform
providers which can fulfill their technical requirement, provide
continuous support, optimized subscription charges, futuristic
adaptation capability etc.
Currently focused services in a
Smart City Solution
The current smart city solutions mainly focus on integrating huge data real time & historical available from various sources and thereby deriving valuable insights into those data and helping different verticals of the city to operate & sustain efficiently.
Command and Control Center
This
is the most dynamic entity of a smart city, from where real-time
monitoring and controlling of various emergency services are managed.
Like centralized video surveillance, network infra monitoring,
emergency services like fire, power, disaster management etc.
Integration of various public and
private services
This
service provides the integration between multiple public &
private services like citizen information, vehicle information,
insurance information, hospitals, schools, colleges, revenue, tax etc.
which helps the city governing body to get collective information &
take proactive actions.
Traffic Management
The
data collected from different sensors/devices like occupancy &
GPS will enable the application to identify the traffic conjunction and
help the authority to get alerts to take necessary actions. Also the
validated statistical data will help the road transport authorities to
design & execute their expansion plans more accurately
Public Safety and Security
The
various video surveillance cameras situated at different parts of
the city will be integrated to a central video management system and
thereby enabling the public safety department to identify unusual
incidents with the help of video analytics and take necessary actions
Utility Management
There
is a large scope of operational improvement and cost savings by
making the utility sector digitalized and integrated. This includes
integrating the different sections like generation, transmission,
distribution, metering, billing, maintenance etc. of electricity, gas
and water.
The data from all of these sources can provide huge information, and
the
analytics of this data can help to plan and execute different
programs to improve the utility sector.
Infrastructure Management
The
public infrastructure includes various things like public toilet,
bus stops, parks, networks etc. Proper operation and maintenance of
these assets can be made more efficient by enabling the various
critical data from these assets made available in the platform and
continuous analysis of these data will help to generate alerts and
reports which in turn improve its quality and life.
Digital Street Lights
The
normal street lights are transformed into a digital one by adding
Wi-Fi hotspots, LoRa receivers, Occupancy sensors etc. This will help
the smart city solution in various ways like helping the connectivity
of devices, automating the parking space near to the street light pole
etc.
Environment Monitoring
The
environment parameter monitoring sensors like air quality, CO2,
humidity, water quality, lux etc. will help to understand the
environment condition and help the authority to take necessary actions
Waste Management
The sensor data from the waste bins & the GPS data from the waste movement trucks are used to analyze the waste management and combining this information with waste management plant operational parameters will help efficient Waste life cycle management.
Parking Management
The
parking sensors installed in the public parking lots and the
video surveillance cameras focusing on parking slots area will provide
the data to manage the parking more efficiently and economically.
Also digitalizing the parking fee with the help of mobile payment app
and on-site payment machines will increase the service quality and
revenue.
A holistic approach to build a
futuristic Smart City Solution
Even
though the above mentioned digital services make the urban
environment citizen friendly, safe and secure etc. there are still a
lot of developments and transformations that can be done to make the
city
improve its smartness and to become self-sustainable.
Some of the key services/offerings which can add more value to smart
city solution are mentioned below:
The
major ones are explained in detail:
Connected Fire Alarm Panels
One
of the important and lifesaving services of a smart city is
connected fire alarm panels. The panels will be connected to the fire
department and the respective building authority for taking quick
actions during the occurrence of fire. The GPS service will help the
fire department vehicles to reach the location quickly by providing
assisted navigation as well.
EV Charging & Electric Mobility
The
EV charging and electric vehicle mobility support will make a
major impact in creating a greener city. For that, there should be more
and more EV charging spots its automated metering and billing
options.
Smart Kiosks
This
is an important end point where most of the smart city services
are effectively communicated with the citizens who are the end-users.
Smart Kiosks will serve as a dynamic interaction medium where multiple
data are displayed using dashboard, pi-charts, news feeds etc.
The examples are Energy efficiency Kiosks for Public buildings,
Weather reporting Kiosks, Mobility information kiosks, Payment helping
Kiosks etc.
Smart Grids and Micro Grids
This
will provide the citizen and city infrastructure to maintain a
sustainable energy environment. The smart city platform will support
the development and integration of smart grids and microgrids thereby
enabling the smooth management of power demand, energy crisis,
energy outage, energy trading and also to reduce the energy wastage.
Smart & Green Buildings
The
transformation of office buildings, stadiums, residential
buildings, Expo buildings etc. into smart and sustainable spaces
are essential for creating a smart city. This transformation can be
achieved by implementing an integrated building management system and
enforcing green protocol in the building construction domain. The smart
city application can track the performance and growth of smart
building and green building by analyzing the critical data from the
respective sources and thereby ensuring the transformation.
Smart City Solution Providers
- Market Research
It
is obvious that you need solid network infrastructure, with a scalable
and powerful platform for materializing the smart city solution and
therefore, the major ICT and telecom players have a strong presence in
smart city space.
As the smart city concept to reality is still in evolving face, the
available providers in the market are also at different levels in their
offerings.
When we broadly classify the solution providers according to their
business segment, they are strong in their domain in providing specific
services like scalable video surveillance with sophisticated video
analytics or powerful data platform for managing large scale data or
strong network presence etc. but a complete package from a single
vendor is not yet available.
In this case, having a detailed specification and consulting services
the smart city stakeholders like a city governing body can make the
smart city a reality with the help of multiple vendors working hand in
hand keeping data security and data sharing intact to mould a
Sustainable Eco System.
Below mentioned are some of the key players
Reference links for Smart City Projects/Pilot Projects/Solutions
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