As explained in part one of this series, Dublin is in the midst of transforming into a smart city that leverages sensor networks through platforms focused on improving the city’s infrastructure. It is doing this by courting global investments and technology firms, including many of the world’s largest information and computer technology firms, such as IBM and Intel, which are developing smart-city technologies and applications in Dublin. But fostering innovation within academic institutions is another key part of the strategy.
“We started life as research group of mechanical engineers at Trinity College Dublin,” says Paul McDonald, the CEO of Sonitus Systems, a company located in Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock (or, as the area is often called in a nod to the many tech firms there, Silicon Docks). Sonitus Systems now designs and sells noise-monitoring solutions, though initially it was developing sensors to track water pollution in urban environments.
Ten years ago, Dublin began looking for technology it could use to comply with new noise-reporting regulations being imposed on all European Union member states. McDonald and his partners pivoted and began focusing on developing sound-level monitors after they were contacted by Enterprise Ireland, a government agency that supports Irish businesses by providing funding and research support. The Dublin City Council has a relationship with Enterprise Ireland, which looks for novel technologies being developed at academic institutions, such as Trinity College, and helps foster their commercialization.
(Enterprise Ireland is similar to IDA Ireland, the country’s foreign-investment agency, except that rather than attracting technology developers to Ireland, Enterprise Ireland helps companies build up novel technologies with an eye toward exporting them.)
The E.U. law is designed to mitigate harmful noise pollution in high-density or high-traffic zones within cities. “The high-level concept is excellent, and benefits of the policy are clear,” McDonald explains. “Measure noise, map it, make a plan to reduce it, and then improve it.” But cities were left to find their own ways to comply with the regulations in a streamlined manner.
Sonitus Systems provides Dublin with a sound-level monitor that measures sounds ranging from 33 to 121 decibels. The device is housed in a weatherproof casing and runs either on line power or a 9-volt DC battery. The monitor collects and stores recordings every five minutes and can store data for up to a year. It can transmit information to the city through an integrated cellular modem for 3G data backhaul, but also includes a Wi-Fi radio so that city workers within range can access the data via Wi-Fi.
The city has installed the sound monitors throughout Dublin. When the monitors detect consistent, high noise levels, city managers receive email and smartphone alerts containing data about the disturbance, as well as a particular monitor’s location. Importantly, Dublin also shares the sound data through a public-facing website, so residents can log in to view that location and track a wealth of historical data based on location or date.
Sonitus Systems is now testing a version of the device that includes an air-quality monitor—an approach that could enable the city to map sources of chronically poor air, or to receive alerts if noxious odors are detected.
In Dublin’s Croke Park stadium (discussed in part one of this series), the sound monitors are used to measure the roar of the crowd. This is useful both for neighborhood noise management and for tracking fans’ cheering for contests inside the stadium.
The company is also expanding its client base outside Ireland, and has installed its noise monitors in Aspen, Colorado, as well.
Connect: Pervasive Nation
Connect is a research program funded by the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centers Program and the European Regional Development Fund. It brings together researchers from 10 Irish academic institutions, along with commercial players ranging in size from multinational corporations to startups, with the aim of conducting telecommunications research and development. Pervasive Nation is a €1.8 million ($2 million) experiment that will establish an Internet of Things network across Ireland, starting with the campuses of the 10 universities and colleges involved in the Connect project.
This spring, Connect announced that Pervasive Nation will utilize the latest off-the-shelf low-power wide area network (LPWAN) technology, developed by the LoRa Alliance, to form the network. Key functions that the researchers plan to integrate into the system are security and authentication algorithms for device provisioning and testing, the speed and ease with which nodes can be provisioned to the network, and a range of sensors that will be integrated into network nodes.
A number of use cases in both agricultural and urban settings, as well as both public and private network configurations, will also be tested. LPWANs are quickly being deployed worldwide as an alternative to high-bandwidth (and higher-cost) cellular networks, because they support applications in which small packets of data are transmitted over a long distance while consuming very little energy.
It’s still early days for the Pervasive Nation program, but there could be many projects within Dublin, from trash collection to bicycle-sharing schemes to building energy or security applications, in which the network it develops will be utilized.
McDonald says that IoT technologies have wide applicability in a fundamental task of city governments: trying to monitor distributed systems on a large scale and then seeking ways to improve or fix those systems. “So anything that can automate that approach for a city is extremely valuable,” he states.
Smart-City Lessons Learned
Jamie Cudden, the manager of Smart Dublin, a city-wide effort to coordinate and amplify smart-city projects being developed throughout Dublin, says that by opening itself up to a good deal of experimentation and testbed activity related to smart-city projects, Dublin is also learning valuable lessons about the potential and limits of technology to address urban issues—and those of working with the private sector as well.
“I think [it has taken] a couple iterations of smart-city projects,” Cudden says, “but now cities are taking a more bottom-up approach, looking to engage startups and small and medium enterprises. And we’re being better about procuring and selecting technology, to avoid being locked in to specific providers.”
The first thing, Cudden notes, is to acknowledge that cities are big organizations. “It takes time to get people thinking in different ways [about how to run a city],” he says. “We’re still at early stages.” What’s more, he adds, it is important for city governments and technology providers alike to have conversations across departments and agencies, because doing so might lead multiple departments to find value from a single technological approach to solving a problem.
Finally, Cudden says, it is vital for cities to remain focused on those problems, and to avoid the temptation to use technology for the sake of doing so. “You can quickly go wrong and lose efficiency instead of gain it,” he states.