When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
Anthony Sayers is the Edge IOT/IIOT Ambassador of EMEA Edge Computing at Lenovo.
That applies whether youre building a totally new smart city or retrofitting technology to a pre-existing brownfield city.
Either way, edge is key here.
You’re dealing with information from sensors in rubbish bins, drains, andcamerasin traffic lights.
Edge will be the key ingredient which gives us effective control of these cities of the future.
Sustainability is the biggest problem facing cities - and by far the biggest contributor is the automobile.
Deliveries which are not successful the first time are one example.
These are a key driver of congestion, as drivers have to return to the same address repeatedly.
Smart parking will be another important way to reduce congestion and make the streets more efficient.
Edge computing nodes will sense empty parking spaces and direct cars there in real-time.
Edge computing can also help to get first responders to the scene of incidents faster.
Smart city infrastructure can detect a fire in a building through vision-based sensors and trigger an alarm.
In any smart city, privacy is the number one concern.
If citizens are trusting city planners with their information, they need to get back more than they give.
Edge can also help with sustainability in the home.
Even the smartest of smart homes detects occupancy and only turns off the air conditioning when people leave.
The nodes need to be part of the built environment, such as inside lamps on the street.
Service engineers can adapt them to interact with thenetwork.
Believe it or not, these are your future data centers.
The future of smart cities
The future of smart cities will be truly human-centric.
A smart city could be fitted to existing cities or incorporate smart technologies by building in greenfield.
We’ve featured the best green web hosting.