San Diego announced last year that it is building the world's largest smart city IoT platform and using CityIQ solutions developed by General Electric (GE) to improve parking, traffic and public safety on city streets.
The CityIQ solution is a smart city digital infrastructure launched by GE and based on Intel technology that provides sensors (or "smart nodes") that can be installed in street lights.
Recently, the city promised to add another 1000 CityIQ sensors and add a lighting control utility interface to increase the efficiency of LED street lights by 20%.
All in all, the project's large-scale digital infrastructure will include 4,200 new CityIQ sensors (3,200 planned last year) installed on 14,000 LED street lights. Building your own Urban IoT by installing Intel Atom processors, cameras, microphones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, acoustic sensors and CityIQ sensor nodes that measure temperature, air pressure, humidity and even magnetic fields on street lights ). Part of the collected data was uploaded to GE's Predix cloud via AT&T's LTE network.
The program is expected to save the city $3.6 million in energy and maintenance costs annually.
GE is currently working with US data carriers AT&T and Intel on the project. As a data carrier, AT&T provides highly secure and reliable networking services. Intel IoT technology provides advanced computing, processing, and edge analysis capabilities to help extract metadata and integrate with sensors through secure cloud connections.
Lighting control utility for the city
The CityIQ system collects real-time data while supporting a wide range of open data APIs and smart city applications that will help address some of the city's challenges, including the Economic Development Office, the San Diego Police Department and the Transportation Engineering and Operations Department. The department is already using CityIQ data to improve traffic flow and pedestrian safety, as well as to implement new public services.
For example, increased computing power can enable streetlights to help drivers optimize travel routes, find open parking spaces, and even inform traffic enforcement when vehicles are illegally parked.
Austin Ashe, general manager of Current's Smart City, said that this is only the beginning, as most of the data collected by the Street Light Internet of Things (IoT) network will be released publicly, and the city allows and encourages software developers to use the data to build applications to help Local residents and visitors.
Currently emerging applications include applications that identify the quietest walking routes (for those who want to talk while walking); "digital cane" apps designed to help the visually impaired cross the road with traffic and location data; and high Use the history of crosswalks frequently; and identify methods of interesting events in real time to find hotspots by tracking how pedestrians gather or move forward.
The lighting network can also be connected to the city's existing ShotSpotter network, which automatically locates sources and monitors sound in real time, and many municipalities use ShotSpotter to increase the efficiency of law enforcement. The addition of smart street lights can increase the coverage of ShotSpotter from 10 square kilometers (about 4 square miles) to a wider area.
Street lights can use the sensor network deployed throughout the city to alert the police to dangerous situations by recognizing the sound of broken glass or car accidents; through a gun detection application, they can pass precise positions in less than a minute. Information captures more than 90% of shooting incidents to help first aid personnel.
Austin Ashe, GE's current general manager of smart cities, says that the way applications and CityIQ come together, like the app store does for smartphones, saves time and money for the city – creating entrepreneurship, creating jobs, creating Revenue and solve problems.
San Diego is said to have the world's largest network of street lighting IoT sensors in the world, involving GE, AT&T and Qualcomm and other public and private sectors. The city is constantly striving to operate the city's intelligence, and recently won the 2018 Smart 50 Award.
All of this started in San Diego and began to replace some street lights with smart street lights.
