When it comes to smart cities, you’re only as good as your connectivity. As such, the community will depend on high speed reactions. To have delays or crashes would be detrimental to the functioning of the entire environment, leading to more than grumbles but a decline in productivity, economy, and quality of life.
Data is a critical component of any operational entity. With the advent of newer technologies, such data is growing at an exponential rate. As a result, when most of this data is distributed across multiple platforms, with manual or non-existent workflows and siloed in systems that don’t “talk” to each other, the data can quickly become stale and disjointed.
In 1962, The Jetsons cartoon came on the scene and gave us an idyllic world enabled by technology. Things like video chat, holograms, jet packs, 3D printed food, and smartwatches were science fiction at the time. These things are all reality today. While the vision for a truly “smart city” might seem like science fiction to some, it’s fast becoming reality. Smart Cities are fully connected, sustainable, energy efficient, and socially friendly communities that use their infrastructure to intelligently improve the quality of life of those who live and visit there.
The coronavirus pandemic may have put many investment plans on hold, but it has also highlighted the global drive to sustainable living in energy-efficient cities. COVID-19 and the economic slowdown from the measures to contain it have had many national and local governments think about building back a better future, one that involves intelligent use of energy resources.
In order to have smart cities, it’s important to understand the most fundamental part of them – smart buildings. They are the foundational “building blocks” that will enable a true transformation of our cities through which we’ll have safe, sustainable, connected environments for the majority of the world’s population. But as buildings get smarter across the world, there is a missing element needed to drive wider and measurable progress – a universal, holistic approach to assessing a building’s intelligence, or “smartness.”
MetroNet is installing a 100% fiber-optic network serving cities just north of Dayton, OH, including Tipp City, Troy, Vandalia, Englewood, Union, Clayton and West Milton. MetroNet expects to invest over $30 million into the project.
BT launches Green Tech Innovation Platform which will use traffic optimization sensors, IoT solutions for energy and water management in social housing and public sector buildings; and 5G solutions to support reduced travel through video augmented reality or virtual reality to carry out remote repair and diagnostics by health and other public sector workers.
The City of Austin, Texas and NTT will partner on an NTT Accelerate Smart pilot project that will use new smart city technologies to analyze vehicular traffic patterns, ease congestion and support community planning in Austin. NTT’s Accelerate Smart data platform, as well as modular data center infrastructure for edge deployments, will monitor traffic-related issues in downtown Austin using Internet of Things (IoT) devices deployed at the intersections of Cesar Chavez Street and Trinity Street and Neches Street and 8th Street.
The Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University has developed an interactive web-based dashboard, to visualize and track reported cases in real-time. The dashboard illustrates the location and number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, deaths and recoveries for all affected countries. It was developed to provide researchers, public health authorities and the general public with a user-friendly tool to track the outbreak as it unfolds. This along with other adjacent data sources can be used to effectively monitor and aid in the reduction of this and other outbreaks from spreading. China has reacted quickly to respond to the monitoring of the spread of this outbreak and Reuters reports that this could be forward looking to reshaping China’s smart cities.
Wyoming, Ohio is the first small city in Hamilton County to implement a smart city solution. Partnering with Cincinnati Bell to realize a “smart city” vision and ignite economic growth, and bring free public WiFi to the municipality as part of a broader effort to ignite economic growth. The municipality installed a smart city solution with WiFi coverage in the central business district, the village green, and the municipality’s Crescent Park. The community may log on through a splash page at “Wyoming Free WiFi.”
