Smart Cities: A Force for Good

By 2050, two-thirds of people are expected to live in cities or urban areas. As populations and cities grow, so does the requirement for local governments to create safe, connected, sustainable and healthier places, with easily accessible public services.

Smart Cities can be a force for good, helping local authorities to tackle socioeconomic and environmental challenges created through intense urbanisation, making them better connected, more responsive and delivering better opportunities and better lives for citizens.

The integration of stronger networks and sensor-led and connected systems devices, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) is critical to enable cities to affordably become smarter. By embracing and analysing data, local authorities are empowered to make impactful and more informed decisions that enhance public services and advance sustainability goals.

Delivering Tangible Returns

IoT solutions solve real-world challenges and demonstrate robust returns on investments. Investing in new approaches, such as intelligent street lighting across cities and damp and mould monitoring in social housing are proven to deliver tangible benefits for our customers. Working with North, Aberdeen City Council transitioned to IoT-based city-wide intelligent street lighting, the result was that they lowered their carbon emissions and energy usage and achieved significant cost savings.

Another example is Wandle Housing Association, who provide homes across nine London Boroughs. Wandle partnered with North to adopt IoT-based smart property monitoring to help them better understand and manage conditions such as damp and mould in their housing stock. By taking a proactive approach, Wandle achieved £400k savings in just one year and importantly, was able to create healthier living environments for their residents.

Optimising City Operations

Smart cities improve city operations through real-time data reporting and analysis. IoT solutions, such as those below, which combine data collection with analytics, are making places and cities smarter by collecting and analysing data and enabling local authorities to take a smarter, more holistic approach to smart city operations.

This data-driven approach informs decision-making processes and enhances citizen’s lives by shaping the future of city planning around their needs.

Environmental Monitoring - IoT-based Environmental Monitoring improves how the management and monitoring of air quality, water levels, flood risk and noise pollution – all in real-time, enabling action to be taken quickly where required to safeguard citizens and create healthier environments.

Intelligent Lighting - Intelligent Lighting systems, which keep streets brightly lit only when needed, contribute to social wellbeing and save energy.

Waste Management - Smart Waste Management increases efficiencies for local authorities, including The City of Edinburgh Council, by routing refuse collection based on actual disposal utilisation rather than universal collection. Creating cleaner and safer streets, lowering carbon emissions and saving money.

Smart Property Monitoring - Housing monitoring can protect tenants from harmful damp and mould and improve maintenance resource efficiency by using environmental monitoring to proactively identify and resolve issues, cut disrepair costs and importantly benefit the health and wellbeing of residents.

Fostering Economic Growth

The deployment of stronger networks and smarter places creates a solid foundation for economic growth and supports prosperity. Stronger, faster and more reliable networks and smarter places built on them are foundations to attract people and investment for sustainable economic growth.

By bringing together technologies like air, water and waste monitoring together with access control, intelligent CCTV, video analytics, and more, they attract people, businesses and investments for sustainable economic growth. The development of a smart city ecosystem fosters innovation, entrepreneurship, and job creation, contributing to the overall economic growth and prosperity of a smart city. Ultimately enhancing people’s lives with investments made to support communities' needs.

Our smarter place technologies, from IoT to intelligent CCTV and waste management, can dramatically reduce your operating costs but will also help you meet sustainability goals.

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Enhancing Citizen’s Lives

The adoption of smart city technologies can dramatically improves the quality of life for local communities. Local authorities are embracing smarter place technologies, such as innovative IoT solutions, to create easier to maintain places, where citizens and communities thrive, feeling more secure, healthier and happier.

Residents of smart cities benefit from improved quality of life and wellbeing as a result of integrated smarter place technologies that reduce pollution, and waste and enhance public safety and improve access to services.