Role of IoT in making a Smart City

Internet of things by definition is a network of non-smart devices (things) that are connected to the internet and share their data and information and act automatically based on that data, which makes the non-smart devices into smart devices.

Now coming to the Smart Cities, there are a lot of things in a city which generates a large amount of data and this data could be useful for the people who are living in that city, which makes their life more comfortable and they feel more secure. To make a city into a “Smart City,” there are some areas that need development and automation. This automation can be done with the integration of sensors and electronic devices which are connected to the internet to share their data and to automate these things.

These are some of the areas which should be covered while converting a city in a SMART CITY.

1. Smart Street Lights: The street lights in a whole city are turned on and off manually by people, there are different people for different areas of the city who have to do this task twice a day, Every day. But, if we use light sensors that will detect the presence of Light and hence help us in concluding whether it is day or night. Then we can operate all control stations with this data from a single place and all the street lights in a city will be turned ON and OFF automatically at the right time, which in turns will also help in saving the electricity.
2. Smart Waste Management system: The waste management system in a city can also be turned into a smart waste management system, where the tracking of garbage cans and dustbins can be done with the help of web applications and with the help of the user inputs, there could be an application for the citizens of that city by which they can directly upload the pictures of waste at a particular area, to the admin and from there the admin can allow a garbage truck to clean that part. Also, it will be very easy for us to track the trucks and complete progress. With the help of smart waste management we can also track the garbage cans if they are full or empty and if they are full, then also it is very easy to track its location and to send a garbage truck to the empty the bin and dispose of the waste properly. This is how the sensors and electronic devices will help in automating the waste management system in a city.
3. Smart Parking System: Space for parking of vehicles has become an issue nowadays, so having a smart parking system will help the people in the city to find a safe parking spot for their vehicle. In order to make the smart parking system, we can use low-cost sensors in a geographic area (say a parking lot) that will share the spaces available for the parking the data generated by the sensors will be real-time data that will show the availability of the parking space on a mobile application designed for the people in the city.
4. Smart Sprinkler System: who doesn’t love parks, they are the best place to enjoy and spend some time with your loved ones. Parks are for all the age groups, but maintaining its greenery is a tough process. Gardeners have to take care of each and everything manually. Now this process can be done with the help of sensors, actuators that will tell the moisture level of the soil and upload this data to the to the internet where it will be calculated that what amount of water is required for the perfect growth of the plants and then the water pumps will be turned ON and OFF automatically depending upon the sensor’s data.

These are just the main points which can be improved with the use of IoT while converting a city into a smart city. There are a lot of areas in a city which can also be improved with the help of the Internet of things, for example, Smart Energy, Smart Traffic Control, etc.

The internet of things is providing the base for the automation of nearly everything. It works this way- Search for the data or information you need to collect from a particular thing, for example- the quality of air, moisture of soil, available space, checking if it is day or night, etc. these all are the physical states and we need sensors to collect these types of data, there is a sensor for almost everything like for checking the air quality we have air quality sensors, for checking the soil we have moisture sensors, to check the intensity of the light we have photodiodes and light sensors and so forth and so on. These sensors sense the physical environment around us and generate the data in digital forms which is then transmitted to the microcontrollers where we perform operations on this data and from there we use a communication protocol to transfer that information to another device. There are a lot of means by which we can achieve this. we have a lot of communication technologies for these little devices, such as wifi, LoRa, Zigbee, Z-wave, BLE, radio waves, Sigfox, etc.

Now the data is transferred to the cloud and we need to perform operations on it. All the processing is done on the cloud itself and then it sends a command to other things which we need to control by following the data that we received from the sensor. Let's say we need to control a water pump when the moisture level in the soil is decreased by a certain amount. The first thing we need is the moisture sensor that will detect the moisture of the soil and then a microcontroller along with a communication device will send this data to the IoT gateway where the gateway will upload this data on the cloud and then cloud will process the data and will send a command to the gateway and then the gateway will forward that command to the particular water pump which makes the pump to turn on automatically when the moisture level is decreased by a certain amount.

This is just a little example of how things will operate in a smart city and how the Internet of things will help us make a city into a SMART CITY.