Deploying Smart City Solutions on Public IoT Networks
With a LoRaWAN network already deployed in their municipalities for water metering, city leaders have an ideal starting point for piloting and deploying Smart City solutions at scale. To learn more about the network deployed in your area, please contact nmcgadden@senetco.com
Public AMI Networks for Smart City Use
Real-time data collection and analysis is becoming increasingly important for the daily operation of businesses of all kinds. Utility operations are no different, and water metering has become one of the largest segments to use sensor-enabled solutions to drive operational efficiencies. Water utilities are deploying millions of “smart meters” globally and that number is growing exponentially on an annual basis.
While Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solutions can communicate over different types of networks, LoRaWAN networks designed for AMI are among the most capable. They are high-density, built with abundant capacity, and secure. Capacity depends on several factors, but even with conservative modeling, a single LoRaWAN gateway can support several hundreds of thousands of connected devices, representing a small fraction of the total network capacity.
Most LoRaWAN networks built for AMI are also public, meaning they are able to support a variety of utility, municipal, and business applications deployed by any number of users.
An Ideal Starting Point
Like many industries and businesses, municipalities can transform their operations and service delivery by deploying Internet of Things (IoT) technologies including networks, sensors, and data visualization platforms. Because of the variety of available options and approaches however, municipal leaders are challenged with how to spend taxpayer money most efficiently as they consider which internal process or community-facing services to start with.
As city leaders evaluate opportunities to optimize existing processes or to introduce new connected services, a critically important choice to make is the wireless network technology on which to build their IoT environment. This choice impacts everything from solution performance, security, interoperability, scalability, and longevity of the applications you deploy and the services you deliver.
With a LoRaWAN network deployed in their municipality for water AMI, city and business leaders have an ideal starting point for deploying highly scalable IoT solutions.
LoRaWAN networks are fundamentally changing the business and industrial landscape. Of all Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies, LoRaWAN has emerged as the leading technology for the broadest range of outdoor and in-building applications, including but not limited to:
- Utility metering and infrastructure monitoring
- Detecting rising flood water or stormwater levels
- Optimizing services such as trash collection and winter road treatment
- Automating irrigation in public green areas
- Automating and optimizing street lighting
- Detecting equipment failures
- Tracking high-value assets
- Managing in-building infrastructure
- Detecting indoor and outdoor air quality
Reap the Benefits
Only with the right vision, plans, and resources in place will Smart City programs reach their full potential.
Connecting to an existing public LoRaWAN infrastructure designed from the ground up to support hundreds of thousands to millions of connected devices provides a cost-effective approach to delivering financial savings and operational and compliance benefits through the use of smart sensors and data insights.
With this approach of shared public infrastructure, integrated projects, and shared costs, municipalities can begin to realize the benefits of digital transformation.
To explore Smart City solutions that can benefit your municipal operations, please download an overview here: Beyond the Read: Get More Dividends From Your Advanced Metering Wireless Infrastructure Investment
To learn more about the network deployed in your municipality, please contact nmcgadden@senetco.com
