Learning from IoT smart city use-cases
The fact is that there are soon 8 billion people living on this planet, 50% of them are city dwellers. Smart city projects are designed to reduce emissions and optimise energy resources. Companies creating products and services for smart cities need to come up with solutions bringing more productivity, efficiency and flexibility aspects into their offering. IoT or digitalisation is changing this offering with tremendous speed.
I’ll highlight few case studies from the smart city vertical which I’ve selected as forerunners in their respective areas.
OMNIFLOW is a smart energy start-up with headquarters in Porto, Portugal. Its main product, OMNILED, debuted in 2015 and offers an autonomous wind and/or solar energy platform for both urban and remote areas. At a high level, OMNIFLOW aims to:
- Democratise utility infrastructure
- Act as an energy solution with storage capability
- Provide an out-of-the-box autonomous system
- Deliver remote web-based monitoring and control
of the following applications was selected to be as lean as possible with respect to power consumption, ensuring high overall system’s performance:
- Smart lighting
- Public Wi-Fi hotspot
- Small cells base stations
- USB charging station
- Video analytics (surveillance; smart parking, location analytics such as traffic, pedestrian counts for operational and marketing analytics)
- Web based monitor and control
OMNIFLOW has created a web based remote monitoring and control platform that allows users not only to monitor the system’s performance but also to control each application independently.
ENERBRAIN has created a cloud-driven set of technologies which combines hardware, algorithms, software and mobile apps into a solution that not only increases comfort but also achieves energy savings of up to 30%. Buildings use around 40% of energy in the world, often in insufficient way.
Most of the large buildings such as shopping centres and airports suffer from several challenges when it comes to their Heating and Cooling systems:
- Low level of comfort
- Systems are un-aware of indoor conditions
- Complex management interfaces are poorly configured
- Energy consumption keep growing
- Aren’t engaging with their occupants
It is compatible with existing building management systems, simple to install and works without the need of expert supervision.
JAPAN TAXI developed a tablet-based advertising solution to use in its vehicles. The service began with a collaboration with a beverage manufacturer.
With an average cab ride time of 18 minutes in Tokyo, taxicabs boast untapped advertising potential. Over the last 15 years, Japan Taxi avoided any in-cab advertising.
Since cabs are like a private space, getting the right ads to the right passengers could offer huge potential.
TOKACHI BUS operates various bus routes in the Tokachi, Hokkaido area but, as with other bus companies, faced the issue of declining ridership. After extensive surveys, they learned that apparently customers weren’t riding buses because they had forgotten how the bus system worked amidst innovation in other areas. With a realisation that they had to get digital to ease customers’ concerns, they partnered with UNITRAND. The result was Mokuiku, an app designed to ease rider’s scheduling by providing location & timing of the buses.
Understanding why customers didn’t ride buses — uncertainty, not dissatisfaction.
I hope these examples will give you some further ideas and help while developing your own IoT solutions. If you are interested to get in touch with any of the above companies and learn more about the mentioned use-cases, leave us a message. Meanwhile, we continue working on the next case studies within boundless IoT industry.
Should you have a particular use case and you’d like to develop it further — just contact us, leave a comment and we’ll take it from there.
