‘Internet of Things’ and Smart City Living By @MetraTech | @ThingsExpo [#IoT]

In the last blog, we explored real world examples of smart cities and highlighted one such example in the São Paulo state of Brazil. What makes this an exciting model for other cities to evaluate and perhaps emulate is that it touches many city services that we can all relate to. It also makes the impact of a smart city on industry and society highly visible. Where does it all start? With infrastructure. Although it may not be the sexiest word that comes to mind, it is the underlying structure that supports common city services. While infrastructure is mostly hidden from the city dweller, without it current and future cities would not exist. All the layers that comprise a smart city are impacted: subterranean, ground and airspace. What is changing is that it is not just acceptable to modernize an aging infrastructure; all of the smart city layers need to interact like a living organism with things serving a plethora of uses and when interconnected providing novel new services. Lighting is no longer just lighting, when you link for example the energy efficiency and long life of LEDs with the additional control and smarts that result from connecting digital light sources into an intelligent network, lighting can play a much broader role. Connected through sensors, smart lights can provide information to diagnose problems, provide energy savings based on time of day/year/season, and vehicle and traffic patterns, and predict when they are about to fail and need to be replaced. Networked sensors across city layers can make the city more livable and transform and personalize interactions for smart digital citizens with their city. The Águas de São Pedro journey also started with new infrastructure.

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