THE CHALLENGE
Our challenge—to help a city with efforts to enhance public safety, monitor air quality and weather, conserve energy and save money all by making a light pole smart! How smart? Smart enough to:
- Continually capture critical information about the air quality, such as levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone or high pollen counts so that citizens can be alerted.
- Warn of hazardous weather conditions in specific locations like a lightning strike, flooding or fog.
- Capture and analyze videos and provide alerts to create safer surroundings and faster emergency response times, without compromising privacy guidelines.
- Provide more or less illumination depending upon the level of activity in the area or time of year to maximize energy efficiency and savings
- Provide the city full operational control of the light poles and their core components and allow visibility of the data from any authorized connected smart device.
This challenge presented our team with an exciting opportunity to help address multiple problems that many communities across the country are experiencing, all by leveraging a common piece of city infrastructure—the light pole.
Spectrum is using four smart light poles in the proof of concept (POC) currently underway in St. Petersburg, FL. We have incorporated several IoT sensors, edge computing, computer aided vision, wired and wireless connectivity, and cloud services for data storage and analysis. Each light pole has dual connectivity. Fiber as a primary and 4G LTE as a secondary connectivity to backhaul the data to the cloud. The fiber switch inside the light pole provides power and connectivity to such sensors as a video sensor, WiFi and emergency call button all of which are collecting real-time data.
The smart light pole uses energy-efficient LED luminaires that can be remotely operated to activate at certain hours. Schedules for events can be set up or the light can automatically turn on when the photocell detects the ambient light level is below a certain threshold. Each smart light pole also has an emergency call button using VoIP call technology which is programmed to dial the local police. Each emergency call box’s location has coordinating GPS which enables the first responders to identify the exact location of the call.
THE SOLUTION
For St. Petersburg, Florida, the smart lighting solution has provided the fundamental benefit of the flexibility to centrally control the brightness and duration of the lights based on specific needs. There are also efficiencies and cost savings associated with using LED technology, such as a longer life cycle and using less energy than previously installed bulbs. The video sensors are helping with immediate safety needs, but also providing city officials with new insights regarding a high traffic intersection and activity in crosswalks. The data collected is at a neighborhood level regarding air quality and weather which helps with short- and long-term city planning. These sensors are not only providing data points that will help with community preparedness and resiliency to changing environmental conditions, but, as an interesting byproduct, they are also fueling new course curriculum at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg campus. Students have a unique opportunity to work with the data and combine it with outputs from other sources to create insightful future solutions. These solutions have the potential to give visibility to new and innovative ways to address everyday environmental issues.
By implementing a proof of concept at the University, we are able to find the right mix of devices and create scalable solutions to meet the needs of the community. As more data is collected from the various sensors located throughout the pilot locations and datasets get richer over time, the city will be able to obtain additional insights. With richer data sets, the city can train the computer vision model and capture additional data to continuously refine efforts to make their roads safer, predict and manage energy usage, and improve public safety.
SPEAK WITH A SPECTRUM SMART CITIES EXPERT
