We are just weeks away from Light + Building 2020. As we prepare for a week full of lighting innovation and design, we’re once again looking at the event’s top themes, to give our take on what they mean to us. ‘Pioneering’ is the second top theme. In the world of intelligent street lighting and smart cities, it’s the epitome of the industry and how we pave the way in ‘connected’ things.
What it means to us
Smart technology is revolutionising almost every aspect of our daily lives. It’s making our cities smarter, with IoT enabling us to develop an ecosystem of infrastructure that aids the way we move, live and interact within the community.
This infrastructure can offer so much more than its intended function. The lamppost is just one example of this. It is ubiquitous urban furniture that can now guide the way beyond illumination. It can gather unique urban data thanks to connectivity and the opportunities openness brings.
As a street lighting specialist, with over 50 years’ experience in delivering street lighting control solutions throughout the UK and internationally, we have a deep understanding of the humble lamppost’s pivotal position in urban environments. Over the past decade we’ve been helping cities transform their street lighting infrastructure, with over 500,000 smart nodes deployed to date.
In this respect, ‘pioneering’ means that we harness innovation to continuously progress with industry leading, next generation solutions. We are pioneering the way city leaders approach the smart city, and how they address the unique challenges on the street. With readily connected infrastructure, we are able to control & monitor urban assets, as well as evaluate & analyse their performance for a more streamlined approach to municipal management.
Pioneering protocols
To enable this intuitive approach to smart city management, it’s important to understand and work towards industry standards and protocols. By doing so, not only can city leaders take control of the way they manage and shape their city, but they can be assured that it is futureproof.
Our Ki. smart city solution, for example, uses both TALQ v2 and LoRaWAN Class C to ensure system interoperability now, and in the future. These universal protocols mean that not only is the system able to accommodate various smart devices and sensors, from a range of vendors, we are able to ensure the upmost security and upgrades.
The LoRaWAN protocol is capable of bi-directional communication, which means that messages can be sent from the cloud based Ki. City platform, to change the dimming, switching or trimming profile of a single streetlight, a group or an entire scheme. Additionally, should there be any power outages, failures or changes in energy consumption, each device can communicate this back to the platform for further analysis.
While this is innovative in itself, LoRaWAN is a pioneering protocol as it also enables us to ensure Ki. is working to the latest version and any firmware update requirements are addressed quickly, with minimum disruption to the ecosystem. This can be done via multicast to target groups, so mass distribution messages like Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA) can be made.
Paving the way with pioneering Services
Providing a quick alternative to the way firmware updates are made reduces manual labour and downtime, while ensuring end-users receive the best smart city services available. But while pioneering technology is a crucial element in the smart city, people also have a large part to play, especially when it comes to services.
Citizens are central to the evolution of smart cities. They drive the need for improvements and help city leaders focus on the unique pain points they experience, as a community. This informs Local Authorities on specific services they must provide and the suitable solutions to deploy in order to improve quality of life.
Software as a service (SaaS) is pioneering the way we look at the urban environment. Rather than seeing it as a series of buildings, street furniture and hardware, we’re now looking at it as digital ecosystem. To ensure the ecosystem is behaving as expected, SaaS models are now being implemented to optimise urban features and respond to citizen requirements.
From lighting that adapts to a citizen using a footpath, illuminating their journey, to road lights that respond to accidents and emergencies; SaaS is pioneering the way data is used from the street to the cloud, in order to optimise experiences and energise future communities.
Find out more about the ‘Pioneering’ theme over on the Light + Building blog.
For more information on our stand at the event, read our recent news release.
