BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

How Telefonica Is Using IoT And Big Data To Build Smart Cities

Following
This article is more than 6 years old.

The concept of a “smart city” is quickly becoming a reality thanks to the ongoing rollout of the Internet of Things (IoT) – the ever-growing number devices in our personal and business lives which are online, connected and capable of sharing data.

The term “smart city” refers to the segment of the IoT which concerns running our civic and municipal infrastructure and amenities, from road and transport systems to waste collection and power distribution. Citizen access to  democratic processes such as decision-making, open data and elections can also be improved with smart technology.

Telefonica – the global mobile and broadband provider which trades in other parts of Europe as O2 – is heavily invested in the concept and has rolled out a number of initiatives and pilots. Many of these projects are now in action across major cities in its home nation of Spain.

Their global product manager for smart cities, Sergio Garcia Gomez, explained to me how they started with the identification of six key “verticals” – parking, streetlighting, refuse collection, environment, transport and tourism.

These are all areas of civic administration where it was found that efficiencies could quickly be driven through IoT initiatives, using existing or easily-deployed infrastructure.

“We have created a smart city platform based on open source standards, and which aggregates sources from many services in the city, mixing private with public data.

“The importance is that this shows how a city can move from being an efficient city to a truly intelligent city - these are great examples of how smart cities are starting to evolve here in Spain and hopefully Europe.”

In waste management, sensors attached to all refuse containers report how close to capacity they are in real-time, allowing for far more efficient allocation of resources to emptying them. It also means KPIs can be more closely tied to bottom-line impact – how many bins are close to overflowing and won’t be emptied within the next few hours? – rather than abstracted variables which could be monitored previously, such as the number of waste collection trucks on the road.

“This is changing the way that services in these cities are being contracted”, Garcia Gomez tells me. “The service provider has 20 KPIs that they have to meet to get their bonus.”

Playing to another of the strengths of smart city initiatives, different applications can be created to let different groups of people take advantage of the tools and data available. In this case, citizens can make use of a smartphone app which lets them tag overflowing bins in their neighbourhood, or bring offensive graffiti to the attention of contracted cleaners. Targets can be set for how quickly contractors are expected to rectify the situation and claim their fee.

The sensor data is also combined with population and demographic data from open sources – “So you can see, for example, how many people over the age of 60 are affected by overflows. Is an 80-year-old going to walk an extra kilometre because her container is full? Probably not. So that gives the city greater info to better serve its citizens,” says Garcia Gomez.

Car parking in a smart city – such as Valencia, one of the locations of Telefonica’s pilots – is monitored through the use of sensors monitoring parking bays. This means that information is available on the density of parking across the city in real time. This helps set parking fees so a more even distribution of parking can be achieved, reducing congestion as well as pollution.

Air quality and pollution levels are also monitored through the platform’s systems designed to help manage the environment. Data from monitoring stations as well as weather data is used to inform decisions on when motorway speed limits should be put in place to stop pollution levels becoming dangerously high in an area.

Data from both of those areas also feeds into another of Telefonica’s smart city verticals – transport. Traffic movement sensors report on the intensity of vehicle movement through a city and enable flexible parking tariffs and intelligent signage which reacts in real-time to help citizens plan their day’s journeys. This initiative is also being expanded to the UK through a partnership with Highways England.

Smart city infrastructure shouldn’t just help a city’s residents, but it’s visitors, too, of course. The tourism industry can take advantage of Telefonica’s initiatives in Malaga and Barcelona, where visitor levels at attractions are monitored, along with the movement of people between them. A focus here is on learning which nationalities are most likely to visit which attractions, Garcia Gomez tells me. Armed with this data, plans can be made to ensure the crowds strolling off cruise ships to explore the city will have a smooth experience.

“Certain nationalities will head for different parts of the city, so when there might be long queues at the Sagrada Familia, you want to help the visitors have a better experience, and know when and where to promote other less popular attractions.”

Telefonica uses the CARTO platform to provide analytics and visualizations based on location data collected from open and private data sources, for use across their smart city initiatives.

Smart cities have been talked about for a while now, but initiatives like those which are being enabled by Telefonica Spain’s technology show that they are swiftly becoming a reality. The key to developing many of these new models for measuring and improving efficiency has been learning to share data between verticals. Just as industry is learning that an open and collaborative approach to data collection and analytics pays off across an organization, the same is undoubtedly true for municipal authorities which manage the essential services which we all rely on.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedInCheck out my website or some of my other work here