fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Innovating in our Town, one bike at the time
By: Luca Spinelli
Tags: Bikes, Environment, Smart Cities, Sustainability, Volunteering

Who knows me has heard a thousand times the story of my small village in the South of Italy. I was born and raised in Sant’Agata di Esaro (Cosenza Province), in a small village that nowadays counts less than 2000 souls. With time, many of my friends (and myself too) have left Sant’Agata to pursue our dreams and fulfill our ambitions.

Despite the distance that stands now between many of us and our village, we still feed the unconditional love we feel for our places. For this reason, my friends and I created a non profit association that focuses on bringing innovation, projects and opportunity back home.

From December 2019 we keep spending our week ends and evenings (sometimes nights) designing projects that we wish to realize, and then we fund them (yes, from our pockets!) and launch them!

Apologies my next picture is in Italian, but with a quick translation you will see that we have created a covid19 fund, we put our small stores on an online market during covid19 so they could still work and survive against the big chains, we branded our home made locally specific products, we won 2 ebikes on a tender so we could deliver groceries for free, we launched a hackathon to get more ideas…

And now? Now we are trying to go bigger! We have seen the opportunity of winning 30 more bikes by participating in another competition, so we started dreaming of a 100% biked place, where everybody could benefit from a bike sharing and avoid taking their cars.

People would argue that maybe a bigger town or a city would have a wider distance to cover in bike, but have we thought about the impact this could have? Residents in bike, tourists in bike, people of all ages in bike. With over 20 Mountain bike paths around our town, this activity would really impact our future. And this way, we could convince other towns to join the same approach.

30 bikes in a town of 2000 souls means really bringing down to 0 the usage of cars in the center and get people to take their vehicles when they need to travel to the Province or elsewhere. To generate the same impact, an Italian large City would need approximately 30 thousand bikes!

So we decided to walk extra mile and participate into the Urban Award 2020 competition that will announce the winners on November 18th 2020. Only 1 City/Town/Village will win the bikes, so we have 16 days to keep dreaming!

Look at our promo video and let me know what you think!!!

If you want to get in touch with us (we speak Italian, English, Spanish), please contact us at https://www.facebook.com/sadefuturelab
Smart City — The Solution For a Sustainable Future
By: Envision Digital Singapore
Tags: Smart Cities, Envision Digital, Sustainability

As technology gets injected directly into the lives of residents, cities are becoming more livable and smarter. They are evolving into what we call smart cities.

So, what is a smart city? In layman terms, it is a framework comprising the Internet of Things (IOT), an intelligent network of connected machines that transmit data using wireless technology and the cloud. These IOT applications receive, manage and analyse data in real-time to help people make better decisions. The residents will be able to engage with the smart city ecosystem using mobile devices, connected homes, cars, etc. With IOT, the city can improve energy efficiency, traffic conditions, weather forecast etc.

How does a smart city contribute to sustainability?

Today, 54% of people worldwide live in cities, and that is expected to grow at a rapid rate. Due to urbanization and industrialization, environmental pressure will continue to increase. With smart city, applications such as building-automation systems, dynamic electricity pricing, and smart mobility could combine to cut emissions by 10 to 15 percent.

For e.g, air quality sensors allow us to identify the sources of pollution, which provide the basis for further action. With these capabilities, Beijing can track the sources of pollution and regulate the traffic and construction, reducing air pollutants by 20 percent in less than a year. Real time air quality information is also shared with the public via smartphone apps, allowing residents to take protective measures. This can reduce negative health effects by 3 to 15 percent, depending on current pollution levels.

Another example is tracking of water consumption. By pairing advanced metering with digital feedback messages, cities with high residential water usage can conserve up to 15 percent of usage. In many parts of the developing world, the biggest source of water waste is leakage from pipes. Deploying sensors and analytics can cut those losses by up to 25 percent. Applications such as pay-as-you-throw digital tracking can reduce the volume of solid waste per capita by 10 to 20 percent. Overall, cities can save 25 to 80 liters of water per person each day and reduce unrecycled solid waste by 30 to 130 kilograms per person annually.

What’s Next for Smart Cities?

With the numerous benefits of smart cities, they are getting recognised as an important investment of the future for efficiency and sustainability. As the world gets increasingly interconnected, no doubt, people are starting or have embraced it, as we strive to improve our quality of life.
Protecting New Yorkers’ Privacy
By: Nyc Doitt
Tags: Smart Cities, Privacy Policy, NYC, Linknyc

Protecting New Yorkers’ Privacy

While Ben Green’s op-ed “Smile, Your City is Watching You,” raised an important point about the promises and challenges of deploying technology in public spaces, the author missed the mark on a critical component — namely, the steps New York City has taken to safeguard the privacy of the millions of New Yorkers and visitors who utilize free, high speed internet offered through LinkNYC.

Contrary to Green’s assertions, LinkNYC has no operating sensors, does not use data collected by the kiosks to sell advertising, and uses cameras only in extremely limited cases, such as to investigate kiosk vandalism. We agree wholeheartedly that New Yorkers’ personal information should not be used without their knowledge and consent to sell ads, which is why we created one of the most privacy focused internet services available anywhere in the country — one we believe protects user privacy better than commercial internet providers.

No one should have to sacrifice their privacy for free internet service. Instead of admonishing New York City on the basis of inaccurate information, the City’s robust internet privacy policy should be used as a model for other municipalities to follow.

Laura Negrón, Chief Privacy Officer, New York City

Michael Pastor, General Counsel, New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications & New York City CyberCommand
FOX-TECH selected as Industry partner for GO SMART Online Forum on Smart Tech in Fighting COVID
By: Fox-Tech Co.
Tags: Covid 19, Go Smart, Smart Cities, Forum

FOX-TECH selected as Industry partner for GO SMART Online Forum on Smart Tech in Fighting COVID

In this unprecedented and challenging time, governments have sought help to tackle COVID-19 as it spreads across the world, and companies have innovated great solutions / products to help us fighting it as well. FOX-TECH CO. Follow May 5, 2020 · 3 min read

GO SMART Online Forum on Smart Tech in Fighting COVID (2020–04–29)

The Global Organization of Smart Cities (GO SMART) organized an online forum gathering the government representatives and solution providers to put our heads together — “A problem shared is a problem halved,” and a solution shared is a solution doubled. Government representatives of Taipei City, Darwin City, Economic Board Utretch, World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization, Government of Canada (Quebec) in Seoul, New Taipei City, and the German Trade Office Taipei participated in the Online Forum.

FOX-TECH’s presentation on Medical Warehouse Use Case

The FOX-TECH team presented an introduction to its TEMPHAWK solution. They are enabling the perishable goods value chain to increase risk management and policy compliance through proactive monitoring. Their solution combine real-time data, easy-to-use applications with secure, low power, and high accuracy sensors.

Here is the link to the Online Forum presentations https://reurl.cc/rxvaj4

Interested in GO SMART? Join a GO SMART charter and apply for a membership here.

About Global Organization of Smart Cities

GO SMART, an international network of Smart Cities. Connecting and facilitating communication between government and industry. Promoting collaboration between Smart Cities through Inter-City PoCs (Proof-of-Concept).

Many cities around the world are currently facing the challenges caused by the ongoing urbanization process happening worldwide. In their quest to more sustainability and livability, these cities and their academic and industry partners have developed their Smart City strategy. GO SMART will accelerate Smart City developments by providing the platform for Smart Cities and their stakeholders to exchange knowledge and by facilitating collaborations.
Container and Shipment tracking System in India
Tags: Logistics, Smart Cities, Tracking

Challenge & Context

Global trade creates big opportunities and bigger challenges. A streamlined supply chain is vital for a smooth flow of goods. Logistics as a sector plays a critical role in defining the domestic and international competitiveness of any economy.

In the supply chain, multiple stakeholders manage their operations and information independently. This lack of streamlining leads to reduced workflow planning eventually causing delays in the container movement.

In recent years, a growing number of manufacturers and retailers have adopted the supply chain view to manage their businesses. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a key role in this process, assuring the linkages between chain participants as well as a more effective control of time, cost and quality of the service rendered.

The Government of India represented by National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) and Japanese IT major NEC Corporation, collaborated to form a joint venture named DMICDC Logistics Data Services (DLDS).

The objective of DLDS is to effectively leverage ICT across the Indian Logistics Sector, providing best practices across the various processes and work towards efficiency in the supply chain. The company aims at bringing visibility and transparency in the logistics environment, streamline the operations across the supply chain and help in the government’s plan of improving the Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in India.

The flagship product of the company, called Logistics Data Bank System (LDB System), is an overarching solution that integrates the information available with various agencies across the supply chain to provide detailed real-time information within a single window. This trailblazing solution provides the export import container visibility service across the Western corridor of India along with comparative performance metrics. It is an end-to-end tracking system of container movement across all ports to the inland container depots, container freight stations and end users, via toll plazas and railway movement on an integrated basis.

The LDB system, currently covering 95% of Indian ports, is based on the FIWARE platform, and relies on several of its key features. According to Capt. Vinod Nair, VP Operations K-Line Shipping Line,
Smart Technology Hunting for Water Leaks
By: Robert Brears
Tags: Environment, Smart Cities, IoT, Technology, Water

Smart technology is being deployed to hunt for leaks in the water distribution network.

By Robert C. Brears

Around the world, a significant portion of water is lost between treatment and delivery, for example, in the United States, drinking water systems lose around six billion gallons of treated water per day or 2.1 trillion gallons per year. In 2019, this equated to the loss of $7.6 billion of treated water due to leaks.

Benefits of leak detection

Detection of large bursts is relatively straightforward; however, detection of small leaks is more difficult, resulting in many small leaks going undetected for years even. By discovering these leaks, society can achieve a range of benefits in addition to increasing revenue, including:

The same amount of water for more people: Reducing leakage will at least postpone the need for additional water resources in cities with a growing population

Lower operational costs: Not only does leakage mean precious water is lost but so is the energy used to treat and distribute the water

Higher revenues: High levels of leakage impact the financial viability of water utilities because of lost revenues

Safe water quality: Water distribution systems with high leakage are vulnerable to contamination due to vacuums developing during low‐pressure situations

Technologies to reduce water leakage

Water utilities have implemented a range of technologies to reduce water leakage:

United Utilities’ FIDO

United Utilities has deployed FIDO, an AI platform that fits onto a traditional listening stick that enables the user to pinpoint the exact location of a leak. FIDO gathers data from the leaks it listens to and stores it in its AI leaks library so that it can learn, with increasing accuracy, how severe a leak is.

SA Water’s smart meters

SA Water in Australia has developed a smart water network with more than 400 sensors across Adelaide’s Central Business District. Leaks can easily be detected with the network containing 305 acoustic leak detection sensors, 34 pressure sensors, 11 flow meters, 3 water quality monitors, and 100 smart meters on customer connections.

Hunter Water’s drone

Hunter Water in Australia is trialling the use of a drone to detect leaks in its network. The drone, with a thermal imaging camera attached, will fly at night over parts of Newcastle, Mayfield, and Cameron Park, scanning footpaths and under the road to detect hidden leaks. If successful, the drone will be deployed to other parts of the utility’s 5,000-kilometre network in the future.

The take-out

Smart technologies are readily available in all shapes and sizes to hunt for leaks.

Join the conversation on the following LinkedIn groups: Urban Water Security, Our Future Water, Circular Water Economy, Blue and Green, and Nature-Based Solutions
An innovation consultant goes full-time in City Hall
By: Bloomberg Cities
Tags: Smart Cities, Innovator Of The Week, Cities, Local Government, Innovation

Name: Lena Geraghty

Title: Director of Innovation and Performance Management

City: Portland, Maine

In her previous job at the Center for Government Excellence, or GovEx, Lena Geraghty advised more than 30 cities as they ramped up their use of data and innovation tools. Now, she’s on the other side of this effort as Portland’s first-ever Innovation and Performance Management director — she started in March.

In her new role, Geraghty works with departments to boost efficiency and customer service; convenes an innovation working group to surface solutions from one department that can be replicated in another; and heads up “smart” city projects such as LED streetlight conversions and preparing for autonomous vehicles.

When it comes to these technology projects, she said, “my job is to make sure we have a common vision — that we’re not just doing one-off projects because we’re excited about a vendor, for example — and that we’re all unified around a common goal for the city.”

An early win has to do with relieving traffic congestion. Portland is experimenting with traffic signals that use artificial intelligence and traffic modeling to adjust to traffic conditions on the fly. In the first two months, one busy intersection has seen a 20-percent reduction in wait times.

Geraghty said her colleagues in city departments, from directors to frontline staff, have been very supportive of the innovation mission. “I’m very lucky,” she said. “I know how long the culture change work can take, but people here have been really ready to just dive in.”

Pro Tip:
The Smart Cities
By: Chang Zhou
Tags: Smart Cities

With the development of digital technology, big data, and AI technology, smart cities have become a hot topic in the few past decades. By using digital devices such as surveillance cameras, we acquire information and turn it into analyzable data, and put together a set of smart solutions that can be applied in some particular fields of city daily life. For example, in some districts of Shenzhen city, Shenzhen Traffic works with Huawei to create Huawei Cloud TrafficGO traffic agent solution by using cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and other technologies. To be more specific, based on the algorithm of more than 100 designed traffic scenes, using the artificial intelligent cameras to catch multi-lane vehicles and people’s faces at the same time, the control strategy of traffic lights can be optimized in real-time after being processed by the artificial intelligent server. In the past, the drivers need to look at the traffic lights and wait for the fixed number of the countdown, now the traffic lights can adjust the waiting time based on the calculated results from the real-time vehicle information. This is a good example of how cities achieve the goals of smart regulation and planning by collecting and analyzing data. As Rob said: “One significant aspect of the smart cities concept is the production of sophisticated data analytics for understanding, monitoring, regulating and planning the city” (12). There are some other similar cases from this idea, the key is the collection, analysis, and use of data. It is believed that with the improvement of mobile networks and artificial intelligence technology, the methods in various stages such as data collection and analysis will become increasingly mature. The development of smart cities must be precisely based on these technologies.
The Smart City, the New Home
Tags: Smart Cities

The Smart City, the New Home

Since the wide using of the internet, the city has massive changes. An increasing number of high-tech technologies and equipment begin to be used in the construction and management of the city, and building a smart city has become the ultimate goal of most managers. Although the smart city is no longer a new concept, there is no unified definition of a smart city.

On the one hand, some people think that technology and sciences are the core of the smart city. In the modern smart city’s architecture, high-tech electronic devices and algorithms play essential roles in collecting and analyzing a large number of data to guide the operation and development of the city (2). Many science fiction films also incorporate the city model into it, giving people a more real sense of how technology has changed people’s life. In 2018, the famous American film Marvel launched the popular film, Black Panther. In this film, the director also built a super-modern smart city.

However, unlike the smart cities built by many science fiction films, Wakanda in Black Panther not only has ubiquitous high-rise buildings and flying cars but more importantly, it preserves African customs and is full of traditional humanities. More people believe that real smart cities are not built by technology and science, but by those people who create technology (2). It is intelligent humans who make these technologies to benefit the development of cities. The characteristics of cities do not come from high technology, but from the people who live in the city. It is the residents who let the city radiate its vitality.

In conclusion, with the progress of science and technology, our life becomes more convenient, and the efficiency of the city is getting higher, but the residents are the core of a city. If only blindly pursue the use of technology to build cities, all the cities in the world will become the same high-rise buildings, and will no longer have their different characteristics in the end.

Reference:

Kitchin, Rob (2014). “The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism.” GeoJournal , vol.79, no.1,pp.1–14.
City 4.0 at EXPO REAL, Munich
By: George Johnston
Tags: Real Estate, Smart Cities, City Planning

The Smart City has become the gold standard to which every municipality now aspires. New York’s LinkNYC network provides services including free WiFi, phone calls, device charging stations, local way-finding, and more. Helsinki created a “smart digital twin” by producing a 3D representation of the city using reality capture technology designed to improve the city’s internal services. In the UK, The London Datastore provides a free and open data-sharing portal where anyone can access over 700 datasets in order to develop better solutions for the capital’s problems.

Although the term “Smart Cities” paints a portrait of a perfect world, where IoT and open data flow freely, the execution is more complex. Current models requires the gathering of large amounts of personal data which, if handled incorrectly, could inadvertently put the very citizen these schemes are serving, at risk. This is where collaboration between public and private institutions becomes necessary. Successful co-creation among government, tech, business, and academia allows for technological growth while also ensuring citizens’ safety and well-being. Enter City 4.0.

City 4.0, a vision instigated by Prof Greg Clark, moves beyond a city that is simply “smart” to one that can respond and adapt to the needs of its inhabitants. Instead of automation, City 4.0 puts its citizens first, striving to build a relationship between people and tech rather than seeking to replace people with tech or use tech for the sake of using tech.

The fundamental principles of City 4.0 has become a key part in our mission at Tech City Ventures, to build and scale technology ecosystems inclusively and collaboratively. I am excited for this opportunity to share our vision at Expo Real. It is my firm belief that tapping collective knowledge results in safer, smarter and more sustainable environments, reshaping not just cities but also the citizens of tomorrow.
Week10 The Construction of Smart City
By: Yue S
Tags: Smart Cities

A ‘smart city’ refers to the increasing extent to which urban places are composed of ‘everyware’. By using big data, the Internet of things, cloud computing and other modern Internet technologies, the digital city, a virtual cyberspace, is associated with the real city to promote the planning, construction and management of the city, and to solve spatial culture, processing and transmission, real-time processing, timely feedback and other services, so as to realize seamless global intelligence.

The development of smart cities is best reflected in urban transportation in our daily life. Especially in China, which has a huge population base, the congestion situation is relatively serious. Cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies can make traffic intelligent and truly facilitate people’s life. When we are planning to go out, we can get the fastest and most accurate travel plan by using Google map, and we can master the road condition information, so as to avoid going out in the traffic jam and arrange our time more reasonably. And today’s map technology has been able to accurately grasp the traffic situation of each section, reflecting the wisdom of a city. In the past, the traffic of vehicles all depends on reading traffic lights, but now traffic lights through the perception of the number of cars to rationally arrange the traffic, greatly improve the road traffic efficiency of vehicles, make the city more intelligent.

Through various Internet technologies, smart cities make people’s life more convenient, safe and comfortable. Safety factor is a measure of the happiness index of a smart city. The application of cloud computing and artificial intelligence in the public security system can greatly improve the efficiency of the police in solving cases. For example, through the installation of artificial intelligence HD video surveillance camera, so as to achieve automatic identification and trajectory tracking, to achieve active warning. Through the mining of video data and the long time sequence analysis of noctilucent images, it can be used to assess the impact of armed conflicts in different areas and maintain the security of the city. High-precision mobile phone location and real-time navigation, both indoors and outdoors, can provide location-related services such as tracking suspects.

The characteristics of smart cities are still people-oriented. The essence of any technology is to make people stronger and provide more opportunities for development. The construction of smart city requires the participation of government, enterprises, research institutions and citizens.

References：

Kitchin, Rob. The Real-time City? Big Data and Smart Urbanism. GeoJournal (2014) 79:1–14
Pandemic will accelerate the development of the IoT industry.
By: Future Home Systems
Tags: Covid 19, Smart Cities, IoT

The global economy is plunging, perhaps into the worst recession since World War II. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis caused by falling oil prices, the economy was experiencing certain problems, and this contributed to the situation that we are now in.

At the same time, the quarantine provoked by the pandemic will become a kind of impetus for a more rapid transition to the digital world, acceleration of globalization processes. With the introduction of quarantine, the speed of digitalization of the economy has increased by an order of magnitude.

We must be aware that the situation that we are currently experiencing will fundamentally change the landscape of the economy. Bold decisions, creative ideas and high technology will allow humanity to derive the maximum possible benefit from the crisis.

Observing the economy in the countries of Perenio’s presence, we have formulated a list of challenges that the market will have to take into account in the next 12 months:

- The Internet of things, called the underlying technology for breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics, will become a catalyst for development in many areas. Such data are provided in a study by Forbes Insights.

- For companies implementing IoT, technology will be a key factor in competitiveness. First of all, we are talking about development, medicine, retail, telecom and other industries, where the technology will provide an increase in the quality of services, added value of goods or services.

- The current economic situation will push companies from various industries and countries to rethink the role of IoT in business development, which will lead to an increase in the number of new projects this year around the world.
Making Decentralized Water Infrastructure Work
Tags: Decentralized, Smart Cities, IoT, Water, Singapore

Smart Monitoring from Pumps to Pipes

Large-scale, centralized water and wastewater infrastructure struggle to meet the needs of fast-growing populations across the Asia-Pacific. As more informal settlements spring up in Asia’s megacities, utilities aren’t well resourced to expand network coverage. This is because building centralized systems incur high capital costs and are not always economically viable, especially for rural communities that will not be able to generate sufficient revenue. These challenges have led to an alternative approach that is starting to gain ground — decentralized water systems.

Decentralized water systems bring services closer to the customers, are more adaptable to evolving needs due to their smaller size, and are affordable in a way that ensures financial feasibility. On top of that, they are also more climate resilient — systems that are geographically dispersed and independently operated are not reliant on just one centralized system that might be vulnerable to external shocks.

However, with the rise of small-scale and decentralized drinking water systems comes the urgency to track the efficiency and health of these new assets. With utilities now overlooking a greater number of smaller assets, they need ways to monitor them in ways that are not labour intensive and that end up soaking up more resources.

Imagine you are a water utility manager who oversees water infrastructure across a fast growing city.. You are analyzing data points for assets ranging from sewer lines and pipelines to pump stations and reservoirs. That’s a LOT of data to handle and most utilities are faced with siloed data across assets. They don’t have the tools to consolidate those insights into ways that can make them more responsive to failures or long-term risks like climate change.
Community Data Platforms: $240,000 in Grants Available to Help Communities Become Smarter and Stronger with Advanced Analytics
By: Community Data Platforms
Tags: Data Analytics, Economic Development, Smart Cities, Evidence Based Policy, Data Visualization

UPDATE: Grants are now available on a rolling basis, giving leaders more time to answer the Open Call!

Community Data Platforms (CDP) is on a mission to help leaders make better evidence-based decisions. With support from Schmidt Futures, CDP will award up to $80,000 to diverse community institutions in the U.S. to build a new data analytics and visualization resource tailored to their communities. Applicants are required to provide matching funds.

The grants are between $40,000–$80,000 and are designed to supercharge the applicant’s analytics budget by 50%. If an applicant commits to investing $80,000 in analytics and is selected, then they will receive an additional $40,000 in grants.

Leaders will be able to use this resource — called a community data platform — to develop evidence-based answers to their most “pressing questions.” Questions like, What’s our daily population? Who needs affordable housing and what kinds of housing do they prefer? What are the most promising economic development strategies?

All community “anchor institutions” — governments, hospitals, economic development agencies, philanthropies, and regional planning organizations, are encouraged to visit the CDP website to complete a straight-forward application.

CDP has found that leaders are tired of too much data that doesn’t provide insights and data warehouses that don’t get used and don’t justify the cost. Hard-working community leaders don’t need a background in data science. They need a team of data scientists in the background.

“Some smart cities are bursting at the seams with data, but they are often no closer to solving their critical issues,” says Alan Worden, CDP’s Founder and CEO. “CDP’s 2020 Grants gives leaders actionable insights by leveraging a team of over 30 data scientists to cut through the clutter, develop reliable insights, and visualize the results beautifully so stakeholders get immediately engaged.”

Community leaders may apply by filling out the straightforward Application Form.

About Community Data Platforms

Community Data Platforms is on a mission to help leaders in business, economic development, philanthropy, and government build smarter and stronger communities through the power of data analytics. To learn more, visit communitydataplatforms.com.

About Schmidt Futures

Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative, founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, that seeks to improve societal outcomes through the thoughtful development of emerging science and technologies that can benefit humanity. As a venture facility for public benefit, they invest risk capital in the most promising ideas and exceptional people across disciplines. Learn more at schmidtfutures.com.
“Okay, Google” where can I park my car?
Tags: Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Gdpr, IoT, AI

In our recent post, we introduced MatchX Smart Parking solution, which eliminates “parking pain” for drivers and can save billions of euros of a city budget. However, we haven’t stopped there and continued our technological development to help improve the quality of life for citizens and make parking difficulties a thing of the past.

Setting up cameras in public is a big privacy problem (and rightly so!). That’s why it is so powerful to combine LoRaWAN with AI cameras: it is impossible to send or store any personal data (LoRa has a low bandwidth) but in combination with artificial intelligence, pre-processed data can be sent. What does that mean?

Think about a parking space: the camera is set up to look over the parking space and records (visualized in red) when space opens up. Only the information ‘there are 5 free spaces’ ‘ is then sent to the cloud and further on to you. This unlocks the use of cameras in countries with strict GDPR rules.

EdgeX AI with pre-trained software to detect parking spots

Instead of deploying hundreds of sensors (150€ each) around the parking space, one AI-enabled camera can tackle this problem with even more accurate performance.

The EdgeX AI can be trained to see or hear the signals you want to analyse. The information on ‘a free spot’, or unusual sounds (‘screaming, alarms’) can then be used, without sending any images or videos. It can also analyze data such as vehicle traffic, vehicle type, peak hour timings, and frequency to predict future trends and provide a seamless parking experience over time.

To make it run smoothly and reliably, our AI tech-team has analyzed thousands of different pictures of parking slots to achieve a level of high accuracy.

A LoRa network can be set up quickly and cheaply with only one gateway (EUR 400) connected to the Edge X — powered by artificial intelligence. The system is therefore highly scalable to a city-wide level.

As the world grapples with population explosion exacerbated by cars strangling city centers, we want to provide the technology that enables hassle-free, but private urban communities.

The AI-enabled camera detects free parking spots in Berlin using Machine Learning in combination with LoRaWAN

It is an exciting market: the Smart Parking Solutions Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17.94% from 2016 to 2021 to Reach a Market Size of USD 5.25 Billion by 2025.

We would love to show you the magic of the EdgeX AI and solve your problems with the most exciting new technologies - Get in touch today!

Original post: https://www.matchx.io/you-wont-believe-how-this-ai-solution-is-solving-berlins-traffic-problem/

Contact us via e-mail — awesome@matchx.io
Banana Pi BPI-F2S with SunPlus SP7021 chip design for Industrial application
By: Lion Wang, Banana Pi
Tags: Automation, Smart Cities, Plc, IoT, Industrial Design

Banana Pi BPI-F2S with SunPlus SP7021 chip design for Industrial application

Banana Pi BPI-F2S is the first board with Banana Pi team and SunPlus, this is a industrial-grade board. use Plus1(sp7021) design.

SP7021 is a SoC solution of industrial control. It meets customers’full demand on function but with low cost so that will improve customers’ competitiveness in the market. SP7021 provides rich GPIOs, storage and USB interface. And it provides MIPI CSI interface for video input and HDMI interface for video output. It also provides FPGA interface for function extension. SP7021 also has 4 Ethernet ports providing customers a high competitive solution.

Characteristics of the SP7021

* Easy-to-use LQFP package.

* Quad-core 1GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, plus A926 and 8051 cores.

* Single 3.3V power*.

* Integrated 128MB or 512MB DDR3 DRAM.

* Eight 8-bit 5V-tolerant IO ports, plus one high-current port.

* Flexible Peripheral Multiplexing (PinMux).

* Dual PinMuxable Ethernet MACs.

* Four PinMuxable Enhanced UARTs, plus one console UART.

* Industrial operating temperature range: -40C ~ +85C.

* Low EMI simplifies certification.

* Modern, Yocto-based Linux distribution.

* 10-year supply guarantee.

* Robust ready-to-run modern Linux distribution available

* And much more…

Application direction:

1. Industrial Internet control

2. IoT

3. FPGA education and development

# SOC education and training practice suite

Trenz Electronic TE0725LP-01–100–2D Artix 7 FPGA Board

more please see wiki page ,will keeping update:

http://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-F2S

BPI-F2S BPS code with kernel 4.19 :

https://github.com/BPI-SINOVOIP/BPI-F2S-bsp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8b13VR7LQg
Digital Billboard for Municipality of Vidigueira
By: Partteam
Tags: Digital Billboards, Cities, Smart Cities, Municipality

PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS, through an important partner, has developed and produced an interactive Digital Billboard for the Municipality of Vidigueira.

In the age of technology, accessibility to information is a decisive factor for an ever-increasing audience of information. The PLASMV Outdoor Digital Billboard with 46'’ touchscreen display manufactured by PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS features a Wifi Hotspot that guarantees internet access for everyone within 50 meters.

This Digital Billboard has integrated The Brain system, developed by PARTTEAM & OEMKIOSKS, allowing information managers to have more detailed control of all functionality and access to statistical data relevant to the quality of this information service provided to users.

Digital Billboard emerges as an alternative to traditional forms of information dissemination, with the advantage of contributing to the reduction of information production and distribution costs as well as to the environment.

This project aims to implement more technology, interactivity and dynamism among the citizens. The aim is for mayors and citizens to become even more connected.

Technology is revolutionizing public services, smart cities, urban mobility and other sectors.
SmartKey’s updated Whitepaper — New Economic solutions for Smart Tokens!
By: Smartkey Platform
Tags: Nft, Smart Cities, Cryptocurrency, Investment, Blockchain

The long-awaited update to SmartKey whitepaper is finally here and it casts bright light on company’s comprehensive understanding of Smart Token potential. Thanks to the reformulated strategy, it is now clearly outlined, that Smartkey Tokens should be perceived as both, the mean that enables IoT technology to be integrated into already existing and arising systems, but perhaps more importantly, that the more SmartKey tokens are utilized, the more their value will grow.

AutoSwap and the SkeyUSD token

In order to provide utility within the SmartKey Ecosystem, it is necessary to own SkeyUSD technical tokens, which is done through the automatic exchange of SKEY (ERC-20) tokens, that are able to be purchased on the market. SkeyUSD unveils itself as a solution for paying off services such as Blockchain Node or Account registration, device activation, deactivation or service provider’s dApp metadata changes to name a few.

This stable coin used by SmartKey Technical Blockchain is denominated in USD and generated in an amount according to the autoswap conversion rate.

For example: In order to buy 100 units of SkeyUSD at $1 per unit, we have to pay a total of $100. The important part is that the payment must be made in SKEY (ERC-20) tokens. At $0.20 per SKEY unit, the fee we would have to pay is 500 SKEY.

Complete circle of SmartKey ecosystem

The foresight of this solution comes from the fact that the AutoSwap system causes SKEY to be locked during the exchange, which means that the token no longer returns to the market.

Introduction of this system in the economy of SmartKey tokens provides investors with a welcome answer why it is profitable for them to hold the tokens in order for the value to grow. The model assumes that the lock of the SmartKey tokens only increases along with new partnerships and service providers that join with more and more IoT devices that are utilized within the ecosystem.

The publication of updated whitepaper and the systemic solution it introduces shows, that not only the price and valuation of the SmartKey token increases in the long term as big partners like Orange integrate SmartKey technology into their smart city projects, but also that SmartKey lays strategic foundation for future implementations by completing the establishment of a coherent ecosystem’s cycle.

WHITEPAPER: https://smartkeyplatform.io/white-papers/SmartKey-WP-EN-LATEST.pdf
GovTech Solutions Series: Building a Truly Smart Community
Tags: Data Security, Smart Cities, Govtech, Cybersecurity, Data Privacy

Principle Four: Provide Security and Transparency

Our newest GovTech Solutions Series paper, which discusses the fourth principle of creating a truly smart community is available today.

Smart communities build systems with robust security to prevent access by bad actors and are open and transparent about their rules for using the data.

Consumer awareness of, and concerns about, data privacy and security are higher than ever. In one recent consumer survey, 85 percent of respondents reported that cybersecurity and privacy risks are among the biggest risks facing society today. In another, 28 percent of Americans are not confident at all that the federal government can keep their personal information safe and secure from unauthorized users.

The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors — especially those used by governments in infrastructure — vastly increases the data about our everyday actions and movements to which governments have access. Combining individual data about movements and actions with data on each about online habits, consumer preferences, personally identifiable details, and more opens a Pandora’s box of potential issues that could further erode personal privacy. Without careful planning, citizens are unlikely to trust government use of personal data collected from smart community efforts.

There are several things that government CIOs and technology professionals can do to meet the fourth principle while building smart communities.

· First, systems designed to capture and collect data must have the highest level of end-to-end security possible.

· Second, government professionals managing these systems must receive robust data security training.

· Third, its essential to plan systems that rely on metadata and patterns to make decisions and changes (not individual movements and actions).

· Fourth, complete transparency with the citizens of the community is paramount.

You can read the full paper here. If there are topics you would like to hear about in future GovTech Solutions Series papers, let us know! You can contact us here.

If your government is ready to build a smart community, we would love to help. Contact us today to set up a demo of our Amanda Platform, or to take a preview before we talk, visit our short Amanda product overview video.
GoodVision Vs Manual Traffic Counters: Comparing User Experience on Traffic Surveys
By: Daniel Stofan
Tags: Traffic, Transportation, Transport, Smart Cities

Everyone who has ever seen a video running at 6x or more significant speed must admit that it is barely possible to spot all traffic objects on multiple movements and categorize them into the correct vehicle category. There are many areas where the user experience in manual traffic counting and GoodVision’s automated traffic collection using video analysis differs. So we decided to put these two methods to the test and summarize the results in the article. Note: even if we tried to be as honest as possible, this is not an independent test, but you can repeat this test yourself anytime at my.goodvisionlive.com.

Visit GoodVision’s website and the LinkedIn profile if you want to know more about what GoodVision does. If you’re going to try our traffic analytics platform for free, visit my.goodvisionlive.com.

Introduction

GoodVision Video Insights is a traffic analysis platform combining automated traffic data retrieval from video with advanced traffic data analytical tools to obtain various traffic performance measures, including the traffic models themselves. Almost all of our current customers on six continents have previous experience with manual traffic counting, and it is often considered a benchmark method. So we have decided to compare the overall user experience of this type of service against automated traffic collection in GoodVision Video Insights. Humans versus machines.

Job specification

We’ve picked two traffic counting jobs for this contest, both roundabouts.

Job 1: 5-arm roundabout shot by the drone in the United Kingdom, 2 hours, full O-D counts needed, 20 traffic movements

Job 1 was the roundabout shot from the DJI drone in United Kingdom

Job 2: 4-arm roundabout from the standard street camera live camera stream, recorded 100 hours in Romania, full O-D counts needed, 12 traffic movements

Job 2 was the roundabout shot by the static camera in Romania

Part 1: Sending the videos to a traffic counting company in India

COMPANY X: From plenty of companies out there, we picked the medium-sized company (let’s call them Company X), which stated they perform over 50 000 hours of traffic counting annually and provide high accuracy. To start, we were asked to upload the videos to a network shared folder.

Company X then requested the specification of traffic movements — we had to provide screenshots from the video, draw the movements by arrows, and name it one by one. Then we were asked what classes of vehicles we require. We require just for 5–class classification: car, van, truck (including OGV2), bus, motorcycle according to UK Highways Classification Scheme definition. That was not enough.

We had to provide an exact specification of each vehicle class, including the image examples of vehicles from each class so that Company X can do it accurately. … I understand we did it for the first time with Company X, but still … I thought UK scheme requirements should be pretty clear to everyone working in this industry. This “project ramp-up” took us a whole day and four emails.
Covid-19: Gen Z are more stressed than Boomers, but Walking Helps
By: Dr Clara Ong
Tags: Covid 19, Social Impact, Covid 19 Crisis, Monitoring And Evaluation

The COVID-19 pandemic demands a quick response to enable organisations to effectively navigate the many challenges it presents.

Since Socialsuite launched its free Covid-19 Social Impact Assessment tool in early April, more than 400 organizations across the globe have signed up.

While it often takes months to collect and aggregate insights at a global scale, we’ve been able to produce preliminary findings into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in just three weeks from launch using Socialsuite.

Here are some key insights:

Across all respondents, two out of three people surveyed reported their stress levels at 7 out of 10 or higher. Those aged 18–24 reported the highest levels of stress in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The most common causes of stress were:

Uncertainty about when the lockdown would end;

Financial strain as a result of job loss; and

Boredom and frustration as a result of being “cooped up”.

The Top 3 activities providing relief to people during social isolation were:

Exercise (mainly walking);

Keeping virtual contact with family and friends; and

Keeping busy with work.

The Top 3 concerns about being social isolated were:

Loss of connection with friends;

Mental health concerns, namely anxiety and depression; and

Financial strain.

Despite the panic buying seen at the beginning of the crisis, only 1 in 5 respondents said they were worried about household supplies running out. Instead, people were more concerned about access to medical care and services.

More than half of the people surveyed are worried about the virus, with just over a third believing that they won’t recover from it.

Further details and findings are available at https://socialsuitehq.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/04/Socialsuite-Covid-19-Social-Impact-Findings-April2020v.0.pdf

If you would like to participate in this initiative, visit socialsuitehq.com/covid-19-assessment to register.