Technologies Fuel the Transition from Safe to Smart Cities

Providing security for its citizens has always been, and continues to be, one of the primary goals of city governments. In the past, the primary strategy adopted by most cities was to focus on building security, with the goal of maximizing the safety of people, property and assets. While this is still important in today’s world, there are now many more tools available (especially in the flourishing domain of technology) that enable cities to enhance their residents' lives along several dimensions, not just asset protection and citizen safety. In fact, many municipalities have already been moving towards adopting a more all-encompassing strategy, one that strives to develop what are known as Smart Cities.

Safe Cities vs. Smart Cities

Since the terms “Safe City” and “Smart City” have become so widely used– and are often used interchangeably– it’s instructive to go over the primary features of each concept to illustrate how they relate to one another and identify what the key differences are.

The primary focus of the safe city paradigm is on the safety and security of people, property and assets. Safe cities employ multiple technologies, including video surveillance, analytics, storage devices, command and control room technologies, physical security information management software, broadband LTE, and information and communications technology. 

In contrast to the safe city, the focus of the smart city paradigm is on connecting devices to enhance city residents' lives, which includes safety and security as part of its overall strategy. The main components or sectors of smart cities include safe city (safety/security), smart economy, mobility/transport, energy/sustainability, infrastructure and governance. The smart city mission features four goals: use increasingly scarce resources (such as energy) more efficiently, reduce costs, provide new job opportunities, and increase citizens' overall quality of life. To achieve these goals, the smart city employs tools that enabled greater data gathering and analysis as well as cross-agency collaboration. 

Note that the smart city is a much broader concept than the safe city; the latter is just one element of a smart city, albeit a vital one. The smart city paradigm is a more diverse, multi-pronged approach to enriching the lives of people in a city rather than just safety alone. 

The transition from secured safe cities to smart cities has been gaining momentum, but it involves changing focus along several dimensions, including a shift in technology strategies– from isolated sensors to solutions, from reactive to proactive monitoring, from deploying single products to creating connected system solutions.

What ultimately defines a smart city is its ability to provide true situational awareness, proactive detection, predictive analytics and connected systems that can positively affect the outcome of a scenario. To fully understand this new paradigm, let’s delve into some of the technologies smart cities are implementing across the public safety, security and transportation sectors.

Wearable Sensors for Crime Prevention

Traditional wearable sensors, known as body-worn cameras, have become an important tool to deter crime in cities. Their appeal is that they enhance the safety of both officers and civilians, while also providing greater accountability. These solutions saw increased demand in the public safety sector after Congress passed the Safer Officers and Safer Citizens Act in 2017, which provides $100 million in funding annually to law enforcement agencies to purchase the technology. Body-worn cameras have become one of the most widely discussed technologies today.

Now, next generation body-worn or vehicle-mounted solutions feature new capabilities such as Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. They are generating strong interest in the marketplace, thanks in large part to their ability to amplify data-sharing capabilities and real-time response in the smart cities sector.  

These advanced, wearable sensors capture video, audio and location data, but unlike older body-camera tech, the connectivity capability triggers nearby connected sensors and security devices, such as a pan-tilt-zoom camera, for expanded visibility and data aggregation for command centers. In other words, thanks to their IoT capability, these new wearable technologies can combine the data gathered by several once-isolated sensors into a more useful, complete and integrated solution for real-time intelligence.

There are many applications for these advanced wearable technologies. In a university setting, campus guards with this technology can capture footage of a gunman on campus and send it back to their command center to provide location data of the intruder; this heightened awareness helps to control a potentially dangerous situation and hold relevant individuals accountable after the incident. In the case of stadium security, security personnel with smart wearable sensors can immediately report incidents, sending video and audio in real time to their command center for live monitoring as well as recorded evidence for use after the event. In medical emergencies, EMT responders can live stream their interaction with a patient to a command center, which can then share vital information with local hospitals, or a doctor could provide critical medical advice.  

Thermal Technology for Faster Traffic Insights

 Improving mobility and creating safer roads for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles is another key objective for smart cities. One of the technologies transportation agencies are implementing to achieve this objective are thermal cameras, which produce images based on heat signatures, designed for traffic applications. Traffic video analytics have been deployed along countless highways and tunnels around the world - and when combined with thermal imaging, traffic operators have the ability to see clearly in almost any scenario (even in complete darkness, during extreme weather, or over far distances).

One of the ways thermal traffic cameras provide value is by detecting wrong-way drivers, with minimal false positives. A key benefit of thermal traffic cameras is that their high-contrast images perform better with video analytics. As a result, thermal traffic cameras can help to lower the rate of false alarms, helping cities to preserve personnel and resources for true emergencies.  

By deploying thermal traffic cameras with analytics, traffic operators receive incident alerts much faster than having to wait for passing drivers to call 911. Wrong-way collisions occur with a higher incidence rate during night-time hours. Similarly, the Governor Highways Association reported that 75 percent of pedestrian fatalities after dark. For these reasons, utilizing thermal traffic cameras plays a substantial role in saving lives at the time when the probability of such accidents is at its highest.

Another dynamic technology cities are implementing in traffic applications are solutions with dual thermal and visual imaging technology for automatic incident detection, as well as data collection and early fire detection. Thermal sensors with traffic analytics can notify operators of potential hazards, such as road debris, in prime high traffic areas such as tunnels. In tunnels, a location where lighting is limited and traffic can quickly get congested, time is of the essence. It is critical to get any logjam rectified before secondary accidents can occur and thermal analytics cameras help with this.

Vehicle-to-Everything Systems for Greater Mobility

Connectivity is one of the fundamental principles of the smart city, and today’s smart camera systems are no exception. For example, we have seen that wearable technologies with IoT connectivity improve data sharing and real-time response; the connectivity capabilities of these systems enable intelligent triggering of nearby devices or sensors, thus helping security or emergency personnel respond more effectively to alarms. In addition, many smart cities are increasingly taking advantage of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) solutions, which employ connectivity (data sharing between vehicles and infrastructure) in order to improve connected driving and traffic management.

By deploying V2X solutions enhanced with advanced technologies like thermal imaging, the solution can detect cars, bike, and pedestrians in almost any scenario even through sun glare, headlight, dust, smoke and fog. These V2X sensors can then share data with other V2X-enabled vehicles or devices allowing for continuous communication that optimize traffic. Implementing this technology enables more efficient applications from left turn assist (often a traffic obstacle as waiting cars back up) to improved bus access and ambulance flow (via traffic signal preemption). These traffic sensors with V2X features can also broadcast basic safety messages to other connected vehicles, warning a vehicle to decrease speed when a pedestrian approaches the intersection.  

V2X technology is expected to play an ever more increasing role as connected and automated driving becomes more prevalent on city streets soon. As cities continue to expand in size and incorporate ever more varied modes of transportation (including the recent rapid proliferation of electric scooters), V2X solutions will see greater adoption.

The Road Ahead

Thanks to a wide variety of successful deployments around the world, the smart city paradigm has become quite popular; according to an IHS Markit report, the number of smart cities is expected to quadruple by 2025 (compared to 2013), increasing from 21 to at least 88. The number of municipalities adopting elements of the smart city paradigm has been growing rapidly, and this is expected to continue at an accelerated pace as technologies continue to evolve.

About the author: Daniel Gundlach is the Vice President and General Manager of the Security division within FLIR Systems’ Commercial Business Unit. Gundlach leads all facets of the Security business, including strategy development, product innovation, sales and marketing, and operations. Gundlach joins FLIR from Apollo, a United Kingdom-based fire detection company, where he served as VP of Sales and Marketing. Prior to Apollo, he spent nearly 20 years at Bosch, including seven years as the VP of Marketing and Business Development for their Security and Safety Systems business. He served in numerous roles during his tenure at Bosch Security and Safety in both the United States and Europe, including VP of Marketing, VP of Business Development, and Chief of Staff to the President and CEO of Bosch Americas.