Smart Infrastructure in the IoT Era

In today’s time, implementing smart cities that leverage IoT and connected technology help promote economic development, improve infrastructure and environment, enhance transportation systems, and optimize costs of managing public assets.

Connected technologies and IoT solutions for smart cities play important roles in transforming cities. Implementing a smart city with IoT and connected technology helps enhance the quality, performance, interactivity of urban services and optimize resources that reduce costs.

The global market for smart urban infrastructure in smart cities includes advanced connected streets, smart parking, smart lighting, and other transportation innovations. Here’s how they work:

Smart Lighting

With smart lighting, city authorities can keep real-time tracking of lighting to ensure optimized illumination and deliver demand-based lighting in different zones. Smart lighting also helps in daylight harvesting and save energy by dimming out sectors with no occupancies. For example, parking lots can be dimmed during work hours, and when a car is entering, it will be detected and appropriate sectors can be illuminated, while others can be kept on the diffused setting.

Connected Streets

Connected and smart streets are capable of acquiring data and delivering information and services to and from millions of devices, which includes information about traffic, road blockages, roadworks, etc. This helps in the efficient management of resources and people to enhance public transportation and the urban landscape.

Smart Parking Management

Smart parking management system can be used to find the vacant location for a vehicle at different public places. Smart parking’s In-Ground Vehicle Detection Sensors are core technologies, playing a key part in the smart parking solution that is revolutionizing how drivers in the malls and city centers can find an available parking space. Wireless sensors are embedded into parking spaces, transmitting data on the timing and duration of the space used via local signal processors into a central parking management application. Smart parking reduces congestion, decreases vehicle emissions, lowers enforcement costs, and reduces driver stress. For the effective deployment of smart parking technologies, each device needs to have a reliable connectivity with the cloud servers.

Connected Charging Stations

Smart infrastructure also includes implementing charging stations in parking systems, city fleets, shopping malls and buildings, airports, and bus stations across the city. Electronic vehicle (EV) charging platforms can be integrated with IoT to streamline the operations of EV charging and addresses the impact of the power grid.

The implementation of a smart city comes with enormous opportunities to transform the lives of people and improve the overall city infrastructure and operations. Smart sensor networks, Internet of Things (IoT), and connected technologies are the key solutions for smart city implementation.