How IoT Solutions Can Enable Smart Cities

The impact of IoT on healthcare, agriculture and manufacturing sector has been significant. Besides these, IoT has also targeted utilities such as houses, cars and accessories. By keeping these utilities connected and giving them the power to communicate with each other, it can help them in collaboration and become more useful. The collective functioning of smart machines (dustbins, buses and traffic signals) makes a city smart. Therefore, IoT Solutions can enable smart cities.

Tech giants like Amazon and Google are quite enthusiastic about smart cities. A survey from Statistia states that IoT Smart City units are likely to become 63.2 Million units by the year 2025. In 2015, the smart city units were 17.7 Million. IoT enables smart cities by making each device traceable and easy to monitor. Other ways, through which IoT can enablesmartcities are:

By Enhancing Transportation

IoT connects vehicles (cars, buses and motorcycles) to the IoT platform and helps in collecting tons of data they generate. It has given birth to the concept of smart parking. Embedded sensors in a car deduct all the empty slots in parking and findone nearest to the user. It helps drivers to find themost adjacent parking space in minimal time. IoT can also improvise public transport. With sensors in buses, people can get real-time information of a bus’s arrival, delay time and stopping points. The connection of buses to the traffic signals provides real-time information about their present location and helps in monitoring traffic. It helps cities to achieve autonomous transportation system and reduces pollution, traffic deaths and traffic disruptions. This way, IoT can enable a smart city.

By connecting the authorities and people

IoT offers micro-controllers, transceivers and protocol stacks. It allows authorities (police stations, fire departments and hospitals) to keep track of different activities happening in a city. As IoT creates a communication channel between surveillance cameras, monitoring sensors and actuators, authorities can reach to the citizens during an emergency. In case of a road accident, the tracker on a motorcycle notifies the nearest hospital. In case of a building or a home catching fire, fire alarm sends a message to the fire department. IoT also penetrates ITC solution in waste management. Smart bins identify the level of garbage and inform the municipal department to empty them. Smart traffic signals allow themunicipality to get an optimized route to reach the smartbins. It reduces time as well as effort and provides efficient waste management. Therefore, by helping the citizens and the governing bodies connect, IoT can enable smart cities.

By Saving Energy and Resources

IoT enables the installation of energy efficient devices at houses, roads and offices. The embedded sensors in the fans, tube lights and televisions deduct the human presence and automatically get turned off when they do not detect regression in their domain. Smart meters at houses monitor the electricity usage and lowers electricity bills. Moreover, things like smart grids and smart streetlights also work on automatic sensors that adjust lightening based on the intervention near them. They change roads into information pathways as they gather data based on the traffic they receive on an average. It helps cities to save electricity and budget the expenses of IoT software.

By Controlling Pollution in Cities

A news article from CBS news states that almost half of the U.S. population lives in areas with high pollution.  IoT can provide theoptimum solution to control pollutions in crowded places like parks, movie theatres, and restaurants. It deploys air quality and pollution sensors across the city. After that, health applications can interact with these air quality measuring devices and inform users about the levels of pollution. The real-time updates help joggers and passerby in avoiding overly polluted places. IoT can also reduce noise pollution. It facilitates noise management by using sound detectors and environmental microphones to measure the level of noise in different areas. This enables people with heart and mental diseases to avoid visiting loud places. IoT also automates the process of monitoring public buildings. In indoor areas, different interconnected sensors and actuators can control lightning, humidity and temperature. It improves the health of a city’s citizens and initiates a smart city.

IoT can enable smart cities by connecting devices and people in an efficient manner. It can provide security, control pollution, and help cities to do an optimum utilization of resources.