What is a Smart City?

Smart Cities have the power to provide data about what’s going on in several unprecedented ways. They change the way we can understand, manage and study cities, and people can be better engaged when they have access to more information about their city regularly.

A smart city consists of various IoT sensors which can share information with the public, businesses, city managers and other sensor systems. These sensors include people, vehicle, or cycle counters, plus many more built to accurately monitor all types of traffic within any given environment. The city connects its sensors and services via the internet of things and these different sensor systems store their information in a common data warehouse and make it available to those who need it whenever they need it.

To effectively serve people it helps if the city authorities know how many people are going where and when. The flow of pedestrians affects the whole city environment. It is important to know not just the numbers of people but also how the numbers change over time. An accurate people metering system provides feedback on changes in people’s behaviour within the city and allows the council to effectively manage the flow of people, vehicles and bicycles around the area. This is also known as smart mobility.

Manchester City Council

The Problem

Central Manchester is one of the largest and busiest cities within the U.K, attracting hundreds of thousands of people every week for the various events, exhibitions, business opportunities, tourist attractions, festivals and much more, but how do you put a number against the impact that’s these events have within the city? How do you know how many more people certain events bring into the city, to then know which of them to either reinforce with additional marketing and promotional support or to remove budget from? These were just some of the challenges that the Manchester City Council Management Team were facing.

The Solution & Outcome

Our consultant worked closely with the team at Manchester City Council to propose, plan and execute a smart city solution which would help to answer this question amongst many others. The proposal included an automated, highly accurate and high performing Video Analytical based IoT sensing technology spread throughout the city centre, across key locations for events and activities.

These devices offer real-time and location-based tracking of people, cycles, vehicles, passengers and objects to fully allow the monitoring of all street-level activity 365 days a year. This then allows for an in-depth analysis of the covered areas to determine trends within the amount of traffic year-round. This critical sensing solution also provides an extremely accurate measure of additional footfall for any events within the city, before, during and after, it also determines hot spots or key performance indicators utilising the location-based nature of the solution. 

This solution allows the Council to accurately analyse not only historic but real-time counting data allowing for effective response during events and activities. Utilising the historic data collected they can review trends, plan for upcoming surges in traffic, and understand which events support the growth of the city, offering profound proof of a return on investment for any promotional or advertising spend. 

All in, this solution helps to support the growth of culture within Manchester, along with enhancing a vibrant and interesting environment, attracting investors, visitors and a strong talent pool. It helps to deal with surges of traffic as and when it happens, and it also allows for the collection of a huge amount of analytical data that can be used to support campaigns going forward. This is just one of the many IoT solutions currently implemented within the Manchester City Council.

R-Com IoT

R-Com IoT are one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of Smart City and IoT solutions, offering end to end support and management of any and all IoT strategies throughout a wide range of industries.

IoT is currently a hot topic and many organisations, councils and business leaders are aware that IoT can offer a not only support their infrastructure but can provide solutions to many issues that were previously thought as unsolvable or expensive and time consuming. However, it’s not entirely clear where to go for the support and guidance needed to begin.

R-Com offer a full IoT service from identifying issues and consultancy, to manufacturing and installing IoT equipment and even analysing the data to offer outcomes. Contact us today to see how our IoT solutions can support your infrastructure.