Don’t get left behind: plan your communications network

The technology advances that have changed our personal lives are now transforming cities. There’s just one barrier: your communications network.

Remember life before cell phones?

“Calls on the go” were made from phone booths … if we had coins. Navigating to a destination while driving? A passenger would carefully unfold paper maps so that they wouldn’t get in the driver’s way. Re-folding maps properly was an exercise in futility. Taking a photo involved carrying a clunky camera and dropping off rolls of film. With a bit of luck and a few extra dollars for expedited developing services, you could even get your paper prints in 24 hours. Imagine that!

Life is so utterly different now, thanks to the ubiquity of mobile wireless network infrastructure and the ever-expanding set of applications available on smartphones.

Cities are now at this type of “remember when” juncture because of the transformational change enabled by new digital sensor infrastructure. While early generation smart city technology was application specific, new smart city infrastructure benefits a variety of market segments. Below, we will have a look at some industries that find value in new smart city sensor data.

Much like the ecosystem unlocked by mobile wireless networks, smart city digital infrastructure facilitates a new ecosystem of solution providers from various industries that coalesce around the value of this sensor data. Cities that adopt this new smart city technology will operate more efficiently and effectively, surging to the forefront of the world’s most advanced cities…

Enhancing public safety and mitigating crime
A smart city solution that monitors the pulse of a city also enables advances in public safety by enhancing technologies that help prevent emergencies from occurring and those that efficiently manage responses to emergencies. For instance, real-time sensors can be used to improve situational awareness in security management platforms, such as those offered by Genetec and Vidsys. This sensor data is also valuable in reducing the likelihood of a crime occurring, which is the focus of HunchLab by Azavea and PredPol. Last but not least, ShotSpotter leverages smart city digital infrastructure to expand real-time critical gunfire intelligence coverage areas, which helps make cities safer…

Read the full article by Ryan Schmidt on Smart Cities Council here.