A New Way to Light Up Cities
The standard streetlights are expensive for cities to maintain, and in some cases, they contain toxic gases. The next step to remedy this problem is to be able to replace these lights with a more sustainable and effective alternative. In the next few years, 4 billion lights will be implemented globally to light-emitting diodes (LEDs). There are many benefits to LEDs, they last longer than standard streetlights, use less energy, and contain fewer hazardous by-products.
Additionally, the potential implementation of the LED streetlights will be the platform for sensing technologies that collect data on weather, pollution, seismic activity, the movement of traffic and people, noise, and air pollution. This innovation will enable cities to create intelligent street poles that are part of an extensive network. It is likely to detect what is going on across a city in real-time and provide sustainable mitigations.
The shift to LED technology gives cities the chance to be able to benefit from real-time, location-based data that can provide both the correlation and solution to urban problems. One such framework, the Light Sensory Network, was demonstrated by Cisco, Sensity and the City of Chicago during walking tours at the Internet of Things World Forum. In the City of Chicago, the data will be shared on Open Data; this will allow different types of analysis to be part of intellectual and innovative changes.
References:
“Array of Things.” Array of Things. Accessed September 10, 2019. https://arrayofthings.github.io/.
“Smart Array: Intelligent Street Poles as a Platform for Urban Sensing.” Top 10 Innovations. Accessed September 10, 2019. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Top_10_Emerging_Urban_Innovations_report_2010_20.10.pdf
