Imagine, arriving to work on time without getting stuck in traffic congestion. Imagine getting the perfect spot for parking while laying on the bed at 5AM. Imagine, sending the patient’s heart rate to their doctors when he is walking, running or doing his usual chores. Imagine controlling your home appliances anytime and anywhere. Everything is going smart, automobiles, homes, industries, health care, agriculture. Before, these were a  myth that used to exist only in movies but with the advancement of internet and with smart city initiatives, being implemented around the world, it has turned into a reality.

What is Smart City?

The conceptualization of Smart City, may vary from city to city and country to country depending on the level of development. But simply put, Smart City is an urban area that uses Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to ease up the livelihood of its people. It is a municipality that uses ICT to augment operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality of government services and citizen welfare.

What is the aim of Smart City?

The main purpose of Smart City is to create a society which can perform effectively and efficiently making effective use of city infrastructures through artificial intelligence. It also focuses to optimize city functions and drive economic growth while improving quality of life for its citizens using smart technology and data analysis.

Smart City Technologies

Smart City makes use of Artificial Intelligence, cloud based services and Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as connected sensors, lights, and meters to collect and analyze data. The cities then use this data to improve infrastructure, public utilities, services and more.

How will Smart City and IoT change our community?

Any city can be transformed into a Smart City with the help of IoT technologies. Practical examples can be found in many industries such as manufacturing, transportation, utilities, healthcare and consumer electronics.

Access to internet is growing rapidly around the world. Furthermore, the costs of connection is decreasing, while new devices have integrated Wi-Fi capabilities and sophisticated sensors on them. Devices are being built smarter, in smaller form factor with lower power consumption and connectivity to the internet. These conditions make it ripe for innovation within the realm of the Internet of Things.

According to Technology Strategy Board – IoT Special Interest Group, “The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the revolution already under way that is seeing a growing number of internet enabled devices that can network and communicate with each other and with other web-enabled gadgets. IoT refers to a state where Things (e.g. objects, environments, vehicles and clothing) will have more and more information associated with them and may have the ability to sense, communicate, network and produce new information, becoming an integral part of the Internet.”

An ideal example would be a smart parking app that helps user to find available parking spaces without prolonged circling of crowded city blocks and expenditure of extra time. The smart parking app would also enable digital payment, so there would be no risk of coming short of coins for the meter.

Another good example would be an app which tracks and manages cargo vehicle fleets. Similarly, smoke detector app can help to notify the person if any smoke is detected. The app along with the IoT web platform will allow the company to monitor, logging and the status of the vehicles in the fleet.

How AI will impact Smart City?

Artificial Intelligence is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence.

Cities abound in data and cyber-physical environments with amazing potential for value creation for its inhabitants. Sensors and actuators are all around us: video cameras, environment sensing, traffic sensing, smart meters, vehicles, as well as the mobile phones we all carry. This is big and fast data. These data can be used to extract actionable insights where AI can shine.

How Ribera can help you?

The development team at Ribera have worked with different IoT Platforms – Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, PTC Thingworx and Thingsboard for the development and deployment of smart, connected devices. Our highly experienced IoT engineering team has developed solutions on customized Raspberry Pi boards with soldered actuators, ARM mbed based end device such as MTS Dragonfly with MultiTech Universal Development Kit. MTS Dragonfly is a multi-purpose cellular System on Module with an inbuilt GPS and digital/analog I/O. The team has performed extensive research with these device in our dedicated state of the art IoT lab, while spending thousands of hours on IoT use case development.

An example of such development is collecting temperature, humidity and GPS data of cargos and food transport vehicles through MQTT. This data is continuously sent to MQTT Broker. We develop user centric solutions that are IoT platform agnostic. Such applications are being used for Smart Transportation and Smart Farming by our customers.

For a free IoT consultation with one of our IoT experts, you can contact us at contact@riberasolutions.com.