IoT Enabled Services and Solutions For Smart Cities

IoT has the power to improve lives, foster economic growth and deliver eco-sustainable solutions for Cities and States. In this post, I aim to cover some of the crucial IoT services and solutions for Smart Cities.

What are smart cities? Urbanization grew at a fast pace in the 19th and the 20th century in the developed countries and it is happening at a faster pace in the developing countries now. In both the scenarios, the need for the cities to be smart is undeniable. The cities that were the icons of  yesteryears, but are crumbling due to old infrastructure, uncontrolled growth in populations,  and, the cities which are currently experiencing a sharp growth, both,  need advanced technologies to provide their inhabitants sufficient water, access to cleaner energy, a fast and efficient mode of transport and a safe and secure environment to live and work while ensuring overall sustainable environment.

In this age of radical opposites, when the cities are expanding beyond their resources while the world is contracting, on the verge of becoming a global village, Urban IoT is indispensable. In simple terms, Urban IoT is a communication infrastructure that enables easy access and unified communication between different devices, systems and public services utilising the synergies between these to provide efficient and transparent services to its citizens. An IoT infrastructure has the ability to optimize traditional public services like transport, traffic management, street lights, surveillance, parking,  healthcare, elderly assistance, intelligent energy management, garbage collection and disposal. In order to understand the apt IoT technologies for a Smart City, it would help to understand the services that could be enabled by IoT in the smart city context.

City Infrastructure: Practically every city, whether old or new needs ongoing maintenance of its infrastructure, highways, roads, ports, energy delivery systems, aviation, bridges and buildings and their continuous maintenance requires continuous monitoring.  IoT technologies using cloud computing and a network of sensors can predict failures and raise alarm in case of emergencies while simultaneously helping the administration prioritize maintenance and repairs as an ongoing activity, thus helping create a smart self-monitoring civil infrastructure.

Adaptive Traffic Management: Traffic congestion, scrambling for parking spaces are some of the common woes shared by people living and working in most of the metropolitan cities around the world. While the existing traffic monitoring systems have been deploying cameras and using GIS/ GPS system to manage traffic in a reasonably efficient manner, the increasing number of vehicles and people in cities require robust, highly efficient, zero error traffic monitoring systems. IoT enables low powered widespread communication between sensors, GPS systems installed on vehicles, at the traffic signals, and at the parking lots and helps citizens to manage their schedule and fuel efficiency better and the authorities to manage traffic discipline more effectively. The command centers connected with a GIS-enabled digital road map of the city and the sensors (both at parking lots and in the vehicles) would collect a large amount of real-time data and by using the power of analytics would ensure a smooth and efficient traffic management system.

Smart Parking: Major cities across the world have reached their full occupancy and vehicle ownership has become a commonplace,  even in the developing countries. Residents lose a substantial amount of time looking for parking spaces. Going around the parking lot in circles is an experience no city dweller can deny. Using the sensing, processing and connectivity features of IoT, the vehicle owners can locate an available parking slot a lot faster and reduce both CO2 emissions and fuel consumption. With the increased availability of sensors, gateways and cloud storage, smart parking applications can be integrated with urban IoT with ease. This coupled with an electronic verification system of parking permits in reserved slots, say, for the disabled would further reduce the instances of spot violations and its aftermath. Here’s an example of how IoT helps in smart parking:

The application “Merge” developed by Xerox has been helping LosAngeles drivers save time and park smarter. The company has deployed thousands of sensors across the parking lots around the city and uses an algorithm-driven pricing model based on dynamic demand and supply, thus, improving parking turnover, space availability and a hassle free parking experience for the residents.

Smart Lighting: Street lights are something we have taken for granted,it’s always been there, sometimes working and many a time not!  Optimization of street light efficiency needs a complete makeover and is a very important feature of urban IoT and smart city infrastructure. IoT applications have the ability to optimize the street lights according to the time of the day, weather, a number of vehicles and people on the street at a particular time, automatically detect any fault in the system and convey it to the managers. In addition, IoT can enable the street lights to function as the connection spots for giving WiFi connections to the residents ( local government bodies and companies have been promising WiFi connections to people all over the world). The street lights could also harness solar energy and automatically switch from conventional to solar as and when required. Hence, the humble street light could get a complete makeover using IoT architecture and applications

Optimized Energy Consumption: Global warming caused by excessive and wasteful energy consumption and diminishing fossil fuels have been a matter of concern for citizens and governments all over the world. Cities around the world are major energy guzzlers, but, are willing to reduce their carbon footprint and optimize their energy usage if provided with proper tools and technologies. Devices and technologies like sensors, cloud storage and big data analytics tools, the foundation stones of urban IoT can help monitor and analyze energy consumption at a granular level and make automated rules for prioritizing and optimizing energy consumption, thus, cutting down on energy wastage and greenhouse gas emissions. IoT-enabled connected smart microgrid are macrogrid is another important application of Urban IoT. This enables not only energy optimization, but also, efficiently integrates renewable energy resources like the wind, solar and fuel cells.

Air Quality: Air pollution in modern cities have attracted the attention of citizens and the administration alike, and why not? Exposure to polluted air is the cause of major respiratory and cardiovascular diseases affecting millions of people worldwide. According to WHO, one in eight of total global deaths is a result of air pollution exposure. IoT technologies can play a very important role in monitoring air quality by utilizing big data infrastructure to continuously collect data from thousands of sources like the sensors placed at crucial spots in the city and from wearable devices worn by the people in real time,  then use data analytics to calculate air quality at multiple geographical locations to the zip code accuracy level and finally communicating the air quality status along with actionable insights to the citizens and the administration in real time.

Waste Management: Landfills are not an option anymore, unmindful disposal of waste is posing problems to living spaces, environment, food security and overall habitability of modern cities. Collecting and disposing of waste generated by 7 billion people is a pretty high-cost exercise. IoT applications for optimizing waste truck routes combined with intelligent waste containers that detect the load level could reduce the cost of waste collection substantially. As for example, the typical IoT components like RFIDs, sensors, cameras incorporated into the Intelligent Transportation System and Surveillance networks can collect data in real time from which actionable insights can be drawn with advanced Decision Support Systems. Taking actions based on the data collected and the insights would help cities manage their waste collection and disposal in an efficient and eco-sustainable manner.

In my next series of posts, I intend to cover the concept, architecture, and examples of the individual IoT-enabled services listed above.