How the City of Calgary is Fostering Innovation through LoRaWAN™-based IoT
By Alistair Fulton, Vice President and General Manager, Wireless and Sensing Products Group
The City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada recently took a leap to deploy one of the first City-owned LoRaWAN™-based networks in North America. Over the course of 20 years, Calgary has worked to build a strong municipal communication infrastructure fostering innovation with internal City business units, civic partners, educational institutions and the broader industry. After years of slowly building this system they discovered Semtech’s LoRa® devices and wireless radio frequency technology (LoRa Technology) which could be implemented at minimal cost. With a population of over one million people, Calgary set a goal for a comprehensive smart city initiative through LoRaWAN to accelerate the adoption of Internet and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) services, to positively impact the services supported and delivered to citizens. Calgary envisions its City Network of Things (CNot) will be used by many of the City’s 31 business units to eventually connect tens of thousands of sensors.
University of Calgary Partnership
The cooperation of several business and community partnerships have been essential to Calgary’s IoT evolution. The University of Calgary has played a major role as professors and students there have long researched wireless sensor networks. Intrigued by LoRa’s promise of long range connectivity, they began to study the technologies and its capabilities for IoT. Once it was determined LoRa Technology was a viable solution for IoT applications, they shifted focus to developing IoT applications that can benefit from this technology such as Calgary’s urban noise pollution monitoring system and potential applications such as forest health monitoring. The University of Calgary continues to work towards a more connected society developing additional low-cost systems based on LoRa Technology to help make their city a haven for IoT implementation.
LoRaWAN Smart City Applications
IoT applications in the City of Calgary continue to improve the quality of life in ways that just a few years prior only existed in science fiction. The use of LoRa Technology via smart agriculture has helped Calgary’s Devonian Gardens uses LoRa Technology to maintain acres of plants indoors. By utilizing LoRa-based devices to gain an understanding of fundamental characteristics such as air, water, light and humidity, Calgary can provide more efficient predictive care to these plants.
The Shaganappi Point Golf Course recently celebrated its 100th year as the City’s first public golf course making it a historical icon for residents. LoRa Technology enables the course to maintain focus on what is truly important by ensuring the game is entertaining to its players. For example, it is used to track pace of play improving operational efficiencies to ensure the overall experience is enjoyable for customers. Location sensors embedded within the golf carts share real-time information to course marshals to avoid anomalies in pace of play. Once detected, these oddities can be swiftly addressed making for a seamless golfing experience.
Leveraging Semtech’s LoRa Technology the City of Calgary has begun its journey to a more connected and efficient waste conscience community. Through University of Calgary research and continued real world implementation of these devices the possibilities are infinite. It will be exciting to see where these developments will take this growing city.
