Enabling Cities to Harness the Full Potential of the Internet of Things

Abstract

Jamie Cudden, the Smart City Programme Manager for Dublin City Council (DCC), had just participated in the most recent review of the sensor-enabled smart gully project in Dublin city. Tasked with exploring how technology can help address city challenges to create a ‘smarter’ Dublin, Jamie wondered why more smart sensor applications were not being identified and deployed by DCC departments. He knew that smart sensors existed in the commercial marketplace for everything that could be measured and believed that most city services could be improved with better, real-time measurement. What he could not understand was why more sensor-enabled connected systems were not being deployed by operational service teams across the city. Over the last three years Smart Docklands, a smart city testbed in the Dublin Docklands, had facilitated a broad range of projects with DCC staff utilising Internet of Things (IoT) technology. While these projects demonstrated the value of IoT for specific applications – such as blocked gullies [Exhibit 1] and waste management - there still remained a relatively low utilisation of IoT across DCC’s operational services. Jamie thought, if IoT is really a better way of addressing these issues, why was there not a mass migration towards its use across the Council? Through talking with his colleagues, Jamie realised that a major barrier to IoT deployments was a lack of knowledge of what IoT was and how it would help address the challenges the Council was trying to solve. How would Jamie energise his current and future peers to identify more ways to use technology to connect the city? How would they learn about the power of IoT connected devices? How might each city department generate innovative smart solutions to identify and respond to critical issues with the infrastructure and services of the city? Jamie had recently attended an ‘Introduction to IoT’ workshop for DCC staff at Dogpatch Labs. The workshop highlighted that educating the city’s staff about IoT could encourage a move towards more sensor driven city operations. With this, he was now faced with the challenge of how best to design and deliver an education programme on a larger scale so cities across Ireland could capitalise on the on the benefits of IoT.