How Do You Lead in the Smart/Safe/Connected City Revolution?

There are millions of devices already deployed in cities, and billions more coming, that can make a city “smarter” by collecting data on traffic, weather, energy, and water usage, and much more, often in real-time. That data can be analyzed, and the resulting knowledge put to work to understand what’s happening now and predict what will happen in the future. For example, monitoring traffic patterns might alert city planners to the future need for a widened lane or new traffic light. Knowing this information well in advance will allow cities to contract with construction firms in plenty of time, with detailed information on where new traffic implementations will be most effective.

Be a “Ninja Innovator” and Join a Public/Private “Strike Force”

In his New York Times Bestseller, “Ninja Innovation,” the CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, Gary Shapiro, delivers ten strategies – extraordinarily relevant for today’s solution providers, systems integrators and city Chief Innovation Officers (yes, that’s a real title).  One strategy is to join a public/private “strike force,” that has a positive, regional, national or global impact on a technology whose importance continues decades later. 

This book describes the HDTV team, evangelizing a technology having perhaps the biggest impact on the video surveillance industry.  Likewise, forming your own or joining an existing Smart/Safe/Connected City Strike Force will have a positive impact on your business and the progress of where you reside.  Who are the top ten potential team members?  Some might be surprised as you form your own or join a Smart City Team.

Public/private “strike force” for a smart-safe-connected city:

Public Agency:

• City Mayor’s Office of Public Safety, Chief Innovation or Digital Strategy Officer, City Public Safety (Law Enforcement, Fire and EMS) Liaison, Homeland Security Liaison, Transportation Safety Manager, City Energy and Sustainability Officer
• Office of the Chief Information Technology Officer or City Network Infrastructure Project Manager

Wireless/Wired Infrastructure:

• Primary Cellular or Wireless Service Provider, including 5G Service Rollout Provider(s)
• Key members of Fixed Wireless Service Provider Ecosystem (Cyber Security, Mobile Device Authentication, Multi-Spectrum Radio Hardware Solution Provider)

Solution Providers:

• Fiber Optic Infrastructure/Internet Service Provider
• Public Safety equipment solution provider for acoustic sensors, perimeter/area protection (LiDAR, Radar), surveillance cameras, venue entry screening
• Transportation solution provider for pedestrian safety, vehicle/intersection communications (V2I), traffic and rail intersection safety, multi-modal public transportation safety and operations
• Critical Infrastructure Providers, including Utilities/Energy, Water, Air Quality, Food Defense

Private Facilities in Partnership:

• Private corporation, B2B, healthcare, commercial, retail, property management, sports and entertainment venue, hospitality (hotels) working groups

Systems Integrator:

• Systems Integrator(s) delivering most or all the solutions in items (3) ~ (8)

For a quick self-test, how many of the above are you already engaging? If it is four or less of the ten categories, get moving; don’t worry, this is where most of us in the physical security industry are.  At five or six ecosystem categories, you are on the way to growing your business, solving public safety and transportation challenges. 

Participating in more than seven categories? You are widening your participation, attracting more members/categories to your team and have skills in fiber optic and wireless infrastructure, public safety, vehicular intersection safety, traffic flow improvement, traffic incident detection management and of course, putting it all together as true systems integrator.  You’re a Smart City Rock Star!

Introducing the Smart Infrastructure That Will Save Us From Our Dumb Cities

By 2100, 80 percent of us will live in cities. How can we start to plan the mega or mini-infrastructure required to protect and support our quality of life?

The ubiquitous 4G LTE cellular technology will not soon replace 5G as the deployment stages of the next technological revolution are challenging, supporting the data collection from billions of devices. 5G will, however, provide us with unprecedented insights and abilities that will change what we do and how we do it in safe, smart and connected cities.

Smart Cities Get Their Slice

5G networks bring a new capability to prevent communications and video streaming disruption, making sure the various requirements for latency, bandwidth, and reliability for different services can be met, and all on the same physical network. It’s called network slicing.

Network slicing is a key component of 5G networks and allows multiple virtual networks to be created on top of a common shared physical infrastructure.

Our Slice or “Wireless VLAN” Enables Smart, Safe City Devices to Perform

Mobile network operators (MNOs) virtually partition or slice the network to guarantee the required performance for various applications. Networks are divided into numerous portions that can be managed independently, customized, and, most importantly, not affect one another if one portion is overloaded or down.  Sound familiar?  The use of Virtual LANs or VLANs has long been a method for video surveillance use to coexist with mission-critical applications and each preserving performance.  In the case of public safety and transportation surveillance cameras in our Smart, Safe City, multiple video streams will be supported and delivered at resolution, while mission-critical messages and voice over IP functions will not experience any delay unless spectrum limits are invoked by the carrier.

The flexibility of this model will also provide diverse services of the future, supporting sensors that haven’t even been yet invented.

The 5G Smart City Use Case Triangle

The following is a unique representation of these network slices, illustrating three categories capable of coexisting on the same network. (See Charts 1 and 2)

A summary of what each slice supports, followed by the Smart City use cases, follows:

mMTC

(massive Machine Type Communications)

This 5G Slice Supports:

• Connected Devices at Scale: a huge number of mMTC devices are typically connected to a given base station or radio, hence “massive IoT”
• Intermittent activity, low transmission rate of sensor activations
• Can support high payload intermittently for   and uses a fixed, typically low transmission rate and potentially high in the uplink
• Ultra low packet error rate (PER)
• At a given time only an unknown (random) subset of them becomes active and attempt to send their data.

Use Cases

• City Network Surveillance Cameras
• Mass Patient Monitoring
• Acoustic Sensors, incl. gunshot detection, trajectory, ballistic data, incident location, crowd behavior)
• Supply Chain, Logistics
• Parking & vehicle presence sensors
• Traffic Intersection safety sensors (LiDAR)

eMBB

(enhanced mobile broadband)

This 5G Slice Supports:

• Traffic can be a direct extension of the 4G broadband service
• Characterized by large payloads and by a device activation pattern that remains stable over an extended time interval.
• Objective of the eMBB service is to maximize the data rate while guaranteeing a moderate reliability with packet error rate (PER) on the order of 10⁻³

Use Cases

• Smart Home
• VR
• AR, Immersive Education
• Cloud Gaming
• Streaming 4K and 3D Video Entertainment Content

cMTC (critical Machine-Type Communications)

This 5G slice features:

• ultra-reliable, low latency and mission-critical communications for small payloads like alarm signals, mobile messaging, incident pictures and event video clips 

Use Cases

Autonomous Vehicles, Smart Grid, UAS missions, Industrial Automation, Remote Surgery

Revenue Opportunities for both Systems Integrators and Carriers

The ability to guarantee top network slices for essential services that need guaranteed metrics (like driverless cars and public services provided by the city itself—emergency response, public safety, public data visibility and more)—will help not only drive revenue for operators, but also ensure the effectiveness of cutting-edge smart city technologies to improve the lives of citizens.

FWA: How We Will Bring Smart City Services for the Rest of Us

By 2020, 4G LTE as the current leading cellular technology will cover 63 percent of the world’s population, but only 37 percent of the landmass.

How do we traverse the “last mile,” and deliver broadband services, supporting safe/smart/connected suburbs?

5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) for endpoint broadband services delivery to business and homes is about leveraging the high-performance millimeter wave spectrum to simulate “wireless fiber” from point to point; not about actual cellular mobility. The short-range fixed wireless access gave the security industry, high subscriber density and short-range metropolitan backhaul to feed end users.

Of the 19 million Americans who lack broadband access – defined as 4 megabits per second (Mbps) download speed, 1 Mbps upload – 14.5 million live in rural areas. Thirty percent of Indians living on reservations also lack access.[1].  A National Broadband/Fiber Optic internet availability map is below:

IoT’s Path Fulfilled: 5G

The reason why we’re seeing more talk about the Internet of Things is the diminishing size and cost of sensor technologies; the same sensor data may be used differently, depending on the industry. “It’s driven by the business case; if there is a use case driving tremendous value, we would see more of a transformational project.” James Bailey, managing director of the mobility practice at Accenture.

With the recent California “Camp Fire,” a mega-fire event composed of numerous city-killing individual fires, the need for massive IoT, early detection systems, communications resiliency for first responders and transportation/evacuation management has been magnified.

The application of FWA where possible supports smaller communities near smart cities and brings vital services to rural areas via “last mile” and other infrastructure deployments.

With FWA and 5G mobile broadband, our first responders’ own lives will be saved via advanced communications; however, the security industry has the great opportunity to leverage long-range thermal imaging alerts via FWA, the potential to contain a wildfire well before it scales to destruction.

5G Enables Smart Cities: Behind Every Great Smart City is an AI

Smart cities using improved transportation, enhanced public safety and connectivity to support the demands of millions ready to take pictures, stream video and text during a major event.  The transition from 4G to 5G will facilitate the shift to ubiquitous connectivity.

A recent report from Juniper Research[2] shows the potential to save smart city residents three weeks of time every year when smart technologies in the mobility, healthcare, public safety and productivity sectors are deployed.

• Powered by AI, Public safety enables proactive policing of high crime areas and yield a savings of 35 hours[3]
• Smart traffic systems, including dynamic traffic control and connected parking, will yield a mobility savings of 60 hours a year
• Efficient delivery of city services will improve administrative productivity, saving residents 21 hours annually

What Motivates Smart/Safe/Connected City Leadership are Your Next Projects

San Diego’s 3,200 connected smart/safe city sensor nodes turn street lights into Intel processor-equipped sensor arrays with video surveillance, delivering real-time traffic management, smart parking, license plate recognition and pedestrian recognition.

In 2016, the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) conducted a survey in partnership with the Smart Cities Council to discover Smart/Safe/Connected City priorities, motivators, and barriers to smart technology adoption. (see charts 3 and 4)

Almost half of the responding City Managers identified technologies serving the public safety technologies sector a top priority. Water defense (29.7%), telecommunications (26.5%), and transportation (26.3%) followed.

How do AI-analytics Stack up Against “Traditional” Video Analytics?

The following series of images illustrate the LiDAR representation of pedestrian movement, together with the tracking visualization.  The LiDAR device renders “point clouds” that are detailed enough to recognize people, vehicles, buildings and roads.  The use of LiDAR devices is both a cost savings and assures privacy. 

The software generating the visualizations and paths is usually open source.  LiDAR, to perform this analysis, alert on traffic incidents, improve public safety, protect pedestrians in crosswalks and sidewalks and detect/recognize objects around a perimeter not only does not require a network camera, is about the cost of a PTZ camera at present, with prices rapidly dropping.  The software cost and licensing model of “legacy” video analytics is rapidly being challenged by established LiDAR technology, as illustrated in Las Vegas new pedestrian safety initiatives in its busiest corridors.

What if Every Vehicle Intersection Used AI + LiDAR[4]?

Las Vegas Director of Information Technology Michael Sherwood:

“The issue was, we didn’t have enough data to know ‘OK, so there are a few accidents. How many times are people going through that one-way that we don’t know about?’

Now, with LiDAR, we’re able to see cars coming in the wrong way. We’re able to have display signs in as the LiDAR sees it (and) automatically say, ‘Wrong way. Turn around. Stop the car,’” Sherwood added.

The move to ‘Smart Everything’ also presents great opportunities for a cyber-safe city as AI-driven network security products prevent costly business disruption by stopping advanced threats from entering or operating within a network.  We’ve introduced the use of LiDAR sensors in smart cities for traffic safety; AI processes will continue to support and improve the autonomous response of these sophisticated yet economical sensors.  The most ubiquitous sensor array for smart/safe/connected cities may be the “simple” smartphone; from facial recognition and camera to GPS, accelerometer and compass, all of them feeding data to apps and to the cloud for AI processes.

About the author: With 30 years of security industry experience, Steve Surfaro is Chairman of both the Security Industry Association Public Safety Working Group and the ASIS Security Applied Sciences Council. He is also Standards Team Leader for the DHS Video Quality in Public Safety Group. Steve is published in a wide range of security publications and delivers an average of 100 industry-accredited sessions each year. He is author and contributor of the Digital Video Handbook, a DHS S+T publication. Steve recently received the Roy N. Bordes Council Member Award of Excellence from ASIS International.

References: 

[1] “Rural Americans have inferior Internet access,” High Country News, link: https://www.hcn.org/issues/46.2/rural-americans-have-inferior-internet-access

[2] “Smart City Era Promises Big Improvement For Urban Ecosystems,” Forbes, 8/18, link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/inteliot/2018/08/10/smart-city-era-promises-big-improvement-for-urban-ecosystems/#50cdc89b7026

[3] “Smart Cities - What’s in it for citizens?” link: https://newsroom.intel.com/wpcontent/uploads/sites/11/2018/03/smart-cities-what's-in-it-for-citizens.pdf

[4] “Lidar, Connected Vehicle Data Collection Among Latest Las Vegas Deployments,” Future Structure, 1/2018, link: http://www.govtech.com/fs/infrastructure/LiDAR-Connected-Vehicle-Data-Collection-Among-Latest-Las-Vegas-Deployments.html