IoT sensors Raising A City’s IQ

From：Woosens Technology Time：2018-10-16 17:28:34

Since the dawn of human civilization, cities have been synonymous with opportunity. By bringing both people and resources together, cities enjoy economies of scale and accelerated economic growth. Drawn by these opportunities, an estimated three million people move into cities every week. By 2050, cities are expected to house an additional 2.5 billion people, roughly equivalent to the entire population of both India and China, the two most populous countries in the world.

In an attempt to forestall or circumvent these consequences, leaders around the world have turned to technology. Equipped with an array of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and increasingly powerful analytic capabilities, the smart cities movement promises to make city life safer, smoother and more sustainable. If executed well, smart cities have the potential to impact millions, if not billions, of lives.

Smart cities movement promises to make city life safer, smoother and more sustainable.

The first step toward building smarter cities is collecting information about what happens in it, thereby reducing the number of unknowns faced by decision makers. Currently, many decisions, even in well-developed cities, are made in the absence of accurate information—sometimes with tragic results.

In 2015, a hundred-meter-high construction landfill in Shenzhen, China, collapsed, causing a landslide that claimed the lives of 74 people and destroyed 33 buildings.

To remedy this situation, Professor Wang Lizhe of the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his team have been working on developing a decision support system for the management of smart cities. The objective of the project, supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, is to help administrators control and maintain their cities, as well as plan for the future.

Professor Wang is now building up a comprehensive understanding of a city from four different sources of data: satellite data, ground-level data, underground data and crowd-sourced data. This data is then combined with simulations to calculate warning levels and projections to enable city planners to make informed decisions.

Last but not least, the decision support system can also help with resource allocation and planning.

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