AGT International has announced its CityMIND 6.5 platform. CityMIND uses IoT-gathered analytics to help cities efficiently manage both events and their resources through one collated system. AGT has partnered with the Smart City Global Alliance and Cisco to test the platform in the Singapore Safe-City Test Bed.
The analytics engine claims to be one of the first such platforms to use ‘data fusion and machine-learning capabilities to correlate, validate and provide accurate information for city incident management and daily operations. It facilitates knowledge-sharing among agencies, brings relevant data from the wealth of information generated by sensors, social media and municipal sources, and engages urban stakeholders ‘ both public and private ‘ to work together to support a common goal.’
An easy reporting system could be a very powerful tool for bringing attention to problems at an early stage. Citizens reporting a funny smell might alert an authority to a leaking sewage pipe a long time before the city might find out for itself ‘ saving both time and expense by fixing the problem before it gets worse. This functionality could also be incorporated into local police forces, estate management and retail programs.
Separate from the information gathering capacity, there is an inordinate amount of value to be found in a system that helps streamline the management of an ecosystem as large as a city. It’s often easy to forget just how staggeringly complicated running a major urban area can be, and this platform’s marketing seems squarely aimed at eliminating the inefficiencies caused through lack of timely communication. This would allow a city to manage its resources and allocate tasks from a central perspective, instead of trying to manage the workflow of several dozen separate divisions with wildly different responsibilities.
Big data enthusiasts will be very familiar with the wealth of information available to a connected city. AGT points to facial recognition cameras, license plate readers, smart bins, audio sensors, smart phones and public databases as sources of information upon which to base CityMIND’s decisions.
For some, the insight gained from tracking the movements of individuals is unsettling and Orwellian, even if the city’s altruistic interest is not in the individual themselves but in the movements of the population as a whole. AGT is aware of this issue and tries to reassure those skeptics.
It says ‘citizens are an integral part of AGT’s urban solution, as they both contribute to and benefit from the body of public-private data being shared between government agencies, businesses and people. Without compromising their privacy, citizens are empowered to play an active role in preventing, managing and resolving both crimes and everyday inconveniences.’
AGT also has a disaster relief and emergency response system integrated into CityMIND. By ‘leveraging a multi-channel broadcast, such as the CityZen application, citizens can receive alerts and situation-specific instructions to keep them informed about emergencies and routine incidents.’ In this capacity, the CityZen app would allow a government to communicate in real-time with its populace, for both urgent and more mundane information communication ‘ consider the difference between a hurricane warning or a traffic report for example.
“Cities are where the IoT can synthesize relevant data, infrastructure and systems to enable dramatic improvements in the quality of life of all citizens,” said Mati Kochavi, CEO of AGT International. “AGT’s approach to smarter cities means the relevant data is available and better decision making is enabled through the intelligent use of IoT. CityMIND 6.5 improves the operational efficiency of every government agency that uses it, helping with effective resource management and deployment. We are excited to bring our proven approach to cities around the world.”
AGT is a privately owned company that enjoys annual revenues of around $1 billion. Launched in 2007, it now employs 2,400 people from its base in Switzerland. The company claims to have connected a greater variety of sensors than any of its rivals in the smart cities industry, connecting the things in the city that have not been brought online before and looking for the value in the wealth of data these sensors collect, saying that ‘we are fast approaching the time when the world’s most successful cities will be those that leverage the digital footprint of the IoT and fulfill its promise of economic and social benefits,’ ‘ to the tune of $67 billion for the world’s ten richest cities if the technology was adopted today, according to AGT.