Bristol hopes to become the UK’s Flagship smart-city following the announcement of the Bristol is Open project. The project, which starts this spring and plans to run for 5 years, will see a collaboration between Bristol city council, Bristol University, and Silver Spring Networks (SSN). It will initially see 1,500 SSN lamp posts installed in Bristol city center, which is not as big a deal as the pair would like you to think it is.
1,200 of the 1,500 will be spread evenly over Bristol, and the remaining 300 will be installed in closer proximity along the Brunel mile. The 1,200 will act as WiFi nodes in a city-wide mesh network, and the 300, also WiFi enabled, are to be used to test more advanced smart-city capabilities. The nodes will use an 802.15.4g protocol called WI-SUN which is a sub-GHz protocol, affording a far greater line-of-site range at the cost of data rate – with a maximum speed and range of the order of kbps and 10 miles.
Silver Spring is a smart city and smart lighting business that sells networked street lighting products and services to customers – usually cities or local governments. SSN claims it has passed the 20m connected devices threshold, with its IPv6-based SilverLink sensor platform and intelligent lighting systems.
The Bristol project aims to build the most advanced, city-wide network infrastructure to date. Using the mesh of WiFi nodes to backhaul data to a fiber-optic network using a software-defined networking (SDN) architecture – which promises to simplify provisioning of spectrum through a centralized cloud management system.
This data will be managed and processed on the BlueCrystal 2 supercomputer at the University of Bristol – an $18 million facility. The supercomputer will run CityOS, an operating system designed specifically to handle the M2M communications throughout the smart-city network, which was developed by Professor Dimitria Simeonidou.
This is all very impressive, but it begs the question; will every smart city require a multimillion dollar supercomputer in order to function? If this is the case, that’s quite a barrier to entry, and so we envision this ending up running on general purpose servers in cloud installations.
In most SSN deployments, the WiFi nodes which comprise the mesh network are installed, along with an array of sensors, into street lighting infrastructure. The advantages of this approach include an existing power supply, which reduces the installation costs – as you can retroactively install them, rather than having to go out and dig thousands of new holes for new lighting poles.
The sensors integrated into the LED luminaire would collect a variety of data ranging from traffic-flow, air quality, and public transportation monitors. “Acoustic detection sensors” were also mentioned, but we’re unsure if this some nebulous term for microphones, glossing over the alarming notion of lamp posts listening in on the public, or perhaps the sensors only monitor decibel levels to analyze noise-pollution for instance.
The sensors can collect huge quantities of data, which can then be plugged into the increasingly popular big data analysis platforms by the council. With a deployed network of sensors gathering lots of tiny bits of information about a city, the council can sift through it to turn mountains of not particularly useful data into an expansive resource that can be used elsewhere.
Big Data analytics can be leveraged in a variety of sectors; traffic and energy management, health and crime trends, targeted advertising, generating new businesses, as well as allowing citizens to interact with the city in new ways.
Bristol hopes that the information can be used by the city and its partners to develop smart-city apps, although no names have been mentioned so far. The Bristol is Open project also claims other cities can simulate their own network load on the Bristol infrastructure.
Despite reaching out to both SSN and Bristol University, who both haven’t responded to our questions in time for publication, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. We’ll keep you updated.
What we know about the business model is that over $4 million has been secured from governmental bodies as a start-up, and expansion will occur when other investors have found profitable ways to leverage the network. We know initially that no sensors will be included, so that the lamp posts will act solely as WiFi nodes in the mesh, and that sensors will be added pending their versatility in facilitating businesses which plan to support the project.
The lamp posts themselves will provide savings purely from the switch from analog to digital lighting, as LED units are much more energy efficient than the old filament bulbs and usually last years rather than months – reducing the cost of maintenance and replacement for the council.
Silver Spring seems to generate most of its business by leaping on cities that are considering the upgrade from analog to digital. There is a compelling business case to be made that for only a little more expenditure, a city can reap the rewards of new LED lights, with all the additional benefits of IoT sensors included.
This service model can quickly provide an expansive sensor network for relatively little outlay, with SSN generating recurring revenues in managing the platform-as-a-service (PaaS). The sales team will no doubt try to point out that the city can effectively re-invest the savings it will make with LED lights into the foundation of a city-wide communications network – which can serve both IoT sensors, as well as general data communications for citizens.
This is clearly the first, tentative, step towards a fully developed smart-city, and it’s an exciting prospect – despite only numbering 1,500 units. With an easily scalable architecture, the project could be the first baby-steps towards a city-wide network – budget permitting.