The Internet of Things is Making Our Cities Smarter and More Efficient

A rural to urban exodus is underway. According to the UN, over half the world's population already lives in a city. By 2050, that number is expected to rise to 66%. There are an awful lot of humans—more every minute, too—and most of them are trying to live in a metropolis.

That surge, coupled with the overall rise in worldwide population, will place tremendous strain on cities. Finding ways to better use resources and reduce waste has become critical. But in crisis lay opportunity. Much is expected of the impending era of the Internet of Things (IoT); the idea is that by putting tiny computers and sensors in just about everything, hereby making them "smart," we'll be able to collect and collate massive volumes of raw data that we can use to make things more efficient. Its benefits will be felt in basically every field, from medicine to retail, weather forecasting to transportation.

Cities are at the frontlines of this revolution. From Chicago to Songdo, "smart cities" are piloting projects that leverage IoT tech to save money, conserve resources, create jobs and improve its residents' quality of life. In the next 20 years, it's expected they'll spend $41 trillion on IoT technologies.

Among "smart" cities, Dublin stands out. Ireland has long been a locus of the tech industry, and in recent years, Dublin has set out to be the most "sensored" metro in the world. To this end Intel has been an important ally. Since 1989, when it established the 360-acre Leixlip campus just outside Dublin, many of the biggest breakthroughs have been researched and developed in Ireland, like the Intel® Galileo Development Board. The campus houses Intel's IoT Systems Research Lab, and a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility that manufactures the silicon microprocessors at the very heart of our phones and computers.

Last year, Intel launched the IoT Ignition Lab at Leixlip, one of eight in the world, in order to help companies bring IoT-related products to the market. Its focus is on "smart" cities, housing, energy and agriculture. The lab features a showroom with demos and developer kits, and hosts workshops on big data analytics, Apache* Hadoop* software, and Intel® IoT Gateway, a platform that connects "edge devices" to the Wind River* cloud service.

In 2014, Dublin City Council and Intel launched a pilot project that placed 200 "sensing gateways," powered by Intel® Quark* processors and Intel® IoT Gateways, around the city to collect data about things like noise, temperature, air quality and traffic. This info is then available to anyone who cares, especially intrepid app developers. At a density of greater than one sensor per square kilometer, it has made Dublin one of the largest, most extensive experiments in IoT technology yet.

The projects being developed in the Ignition Lab dovetail rather nicely with Dublin's "smart" city campaign. Glen Dimplex, a company that manufactures consumer electronics, has recently designed an electric heater that uses stored wind or wave energy and is controlled remotely. Intel is helping them develop the thermal storage system on which it relies.

A lighting company named Patina is working with Intel to refine their energy-saving lamps, embedded with Intel® Atom™ processors and connected via the Intel® IoT gateway, allowing them to do things like automatically adjust brightness according to natural light, or simply turn off if no one is around. For large warehouses or factories, the savings would be enormous; when scaled out to an entire industry or city, it's possible that one innovation—which you probably wouldn't even notice—could spare untold volumes of waste and cash. The lamps also track foot traffic throughout the building, data that can help companies understand exactly how their space is being used, or not.

Keenan, a manufacturer of wagons used to feed cattle on over 30,000 farms in 26 different countries, has partnered with Intel to dramatically increase efficiency all throughout the food supply chain. Using a system called InTouch, sensors record data about the way cows eat and its relation to milk quantity and quality. That information can then be analyzed by company nutritionists, who use it to develop recipes to make the cattle healthier and more productive. Those recipes are then shared with farmers. The company claims it can raise milk productivity by 25% without using any more feed. Whereas previous generations had to manually collect and share that kind of data, InTouch does it all pretty much automatically, and in far greater detail.

The work being done by Glen Dimplex, Patina, and Keenan, in concert with the Ignition Lab, offer some pretty tidy examples of what the Internet of Things will look like in practice. It's likely that a solution to the extraordinary pressures placed on our environment and our cities by population growth will be comprised of a whole bunch of tiny solutions to inefficiencies, in each industry, in each home. Often, those inefficiencies are only made visible by Big Data. "Smart" cities like Dublin have invested heavily in the Internet of Things. It's leaders are betting that the hundreds of edge devices they've deployed will generate data that will lead to scientific breakthroughs we can't even conceive of yet, innovations that will save us money, and in a way, save the world.

Learn more about how you can get started with Intel® IoT

If you are a developer and want to be involved in helping make cities "smart" using Intel® IoT, here's your opportunity to begin changing the world:

• Move rapidly from Prototype to Production
• Choose the Right IoT Gateway
• Download the Intel® IoT Developer Kit

If you are looking for IoT solutions in this space, here are some additional resources:
Industry Solutions
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