- THE IOT TO BRING MORE INTELLIGENCE TO CITIES -
As the population increases, cities are becoming increasingly populated and complex to manage. Their administration is a major challenge today and especially for the city of tomorrow. Bringing intelligence to these cities through IoT is one of the solutions used to meet the challenges of energy, travel, security or even waste, and allow the city to optimise its operation and continue to grow. Decryption through the challenge of waste collection…
What will the city of tomorrow look like?
With population densification, the city of tomorrow will inevitably be more complex. The issues of energy management, travel, security or even waste will become more and more important. To meet these challenges, the city of tomorrow must transform itself into a smart city.
This is an idea that a certain number of cities have already begun to integrate and which must should make it possible to reconcile population density with savings and more environmentally friendly practices to the benefit of uses and territories.
It is in this context that IoT has a role, by becoming a facilitator for improving and optimising the city.
Let’s take an example: waste collection. With population massification, the World Bank estimates that by the mid-2000s the world’s annual waste generation will range from 3,400 to 4,000 billion tonnes – and the forecasts show a 40% increase between 2008 and 2040. Intelligent waste management is therefore a major challenge for the smart city.
How to use data to optimise the city?
IoT makes it possible to bring intelligence into everyday objects that are devoid of it, such as containers, skips or compactors. By placing a sensor in a skip, it will be able to establish its level of filling, report an anomaly or measure its time of use. A set of data which, once communicated and analysed, will help improve the management of collections, especially for those responsible for collecting rounds in order to intervene in the right place and at the right time.
The results of this optimised waste management: a reduction in fuel consumption, limitation of vehicle maintenance costs, reduction of CO2 emissions and also an increase in user satisfaction.
More broadly, through valuation of the data collected, intelligent waste management can increase the recycling rate, reduce the volume of waste, reduce the energy expenditure devoted to their collection, and even produce energy.
The datum, therefore, becomes a valuable piece of information and its valuation a major challenge. And this is just the beginning: IoT can be integrated into multiple use cases in various fields to bring even more intelligence to cities.
