We talk a lot about smartphones and even smart homes, but let's not sleep on smart cities. They are getting more wired all the time, in ways that don't just provide convenience — such as alerting drivers to open parking spots — but that make people safer and reduce insurance claims.
The two latest examples that caught my eye are the deployment of sensors on Chicago streets that can detect flooding and a General Motors patent application for a way to use its cars to sense road condition. The Chicago sensors will relay warnings to property owners and to authorities. The GM data will flow to drivers to let them avoid trouble and to local governments that can fix the roads.
But there's a lot more besides, and progress will likely accelerate from here.
The Chicago and GM stories demonstrate both the promise of innovations in cities and what pieces still need to fall into place so those innovations can be deployed widely and deliver major benefits.
In Chicago, 50 sensors will be deployed over the next 18 months on bridges, above roads and in sewers. Wireless and powered by solar, the cylindrical sensors will use sonar to measure the depth of water beneath them. If levels are rising at a threatening pace, the sensors will create instant flood maps for city authorities, who will alert property owners in affected areas.
Chicago is a big place, so a lot more than 50 sensors will eventually need to be deployed. Bugs will also surely need to be worked out of the technology. Costs will need to come down — each sensor currently costs about $1,500.
But all those issues feel manageable, based on the cost and performance curves that are normal for this type of technology. Sensors for water leaks in homes, for instance, began as elaborate devices, shrank to about the size of hockey pucks, and now, according to an announcement from Hartford Steam Boiler, can be as thin as four credit cards stacked on top of each other.
As it happens, as I was about to publish this commentary, the New York Times published a piece this morning about a system that is similar to Chicago's, that is further along and that underscores the need for the final, key piece: getting the word out, and rapidly.
Spurred on by damage from Hurricane Ida four years ago, New York City has installed 250 sonar-based sensors whose cost is just $300 apiece and plans to double the number of sensors by 2027. The Times reports a big improvement in understanding flash flooding in real time — previously, authorities only learned of problems based on emergency calls, social media posts and news reports.
But the notification system is passive. You have to monitor a city website to see where flooding may be happening. If you're alert, likely because you've suffered damage in the past, you're fine. If not, you're as vulnerable as ever.
The leaders of FloodNet, the sensor network New York uses, say they're piloting a system that can alert people via email, which will mark a huge improvement. An even bigger one will be when FloodNet and similar sensor operators can ping the cellphones both of those who've signed up for flooding alerts and of any others in an area, such as drivers, who might be affected.
The GM system has much further to go than the flooding sensors but could also deliver major safety benefits if GM can, in fact, gather useful information about road conditions from sensors that track the traction that a car's tires get and the movement in its suspension system. I grew up driving in Pittsburgh, where potholes seemed to show up everywhere during the spring thaw, and would have loved to know to be prepared to skirt a big one just ahead. A whole lot of drivers suffered damage to their cars and put in insurance claims that could have been avoided if a system like GM's were in place.
GM will face the same notification issue that the flood sensors do. It's one thing to have one car detect an anomaly. It's quite another to collect data from enough cars to be sure there's a problem with a road surface, and even more difficult to communicate that finding to a driver in real time.
I'm optimistic that the connection challenges can be addressed relatively quickly because of a system called Sidewalk that Amazon has introduced that is an inexpensive backbone for communication with sensors.
One of the challenges for "connected cars" has been that they typically communicate with their hosts via cellular networks, requiring lots of relatively expensive bandwidth. Sidewalk, by contrast, is low-bandwidth and low-cost.
It operates via a mesh concept: A sensor doesn't need to send a signal so strong that it will reach a cell tower miles away. The signal just needs to be strong enough to reach any other device that is in the mesh network and within half a mile. That next device can then forward the data to any other device and so on until it reaches a major node that can send the data to its final destination.
A mesh network can get overloaded if lots of data needs to be sent, but something such as a water-depth sensor is just sending a single number, perhaps every few seconds. The system Hartford Steam Boiler announced is, for instance, transmitting its data via Sidewalk.
As Sidewalk and potentially similar communication backbones are developed, sensor networks will no longer need to worry about how to transmit their data. They just have to get it to a Sidewalk/etc. node. Similar standards will develop on the back end, handling the notifications to those who want them.
So we can let our imaginations run wild. What else, beyond warnings about flooding and bad roads, should be sensed in a city and relayed to interested parties in real time?
If you step back a bit, you can see that smart cities have made real progress in recent years and decades. Some of that progress is mostly convenience. Traffic lights are synchronized so you generally don't have to stop on a main road if you're driving at the speed limit. Signs or phone alerts tell you just when that bus or subway will arrive. Your phone lets you know of traffic jams and can reroute you. Sensors in the pavement and in streetlights can monitor parking spaces and let you know when one is empty.
Some of that convenience leads to safety. Knowing that there is an accident ahead of you makes you less likely to plow into something. Getting people into parking spaces faster reduces traffic in cities — a remarkable amount of which is people looking for spots — and decreases the number of accidents.
And with the flood sensors and, perhaps, GM's sensing of road conditions, we're seeing even more opportunities for safety.
What's next?
Let's have at it.
Cheers,
Paul