14 DAY TRIAL // Cisco and the Hamburg Port Authority are on their way to implementing and building the world's first ever smart-road.
In a project first announced over a year ago, the city of Hamburg and Cisco will be experimenting with a new method of monitoring and managing city streets via the smartROAD project.
This initiative was today updated with new information on exactly how the streets around Hamburg's port will be transformed.
Traffic management, smart lighting, structural & environmental sensors
First off, there's the problem any major city around the globe has, may it be in Germany, Paraguay, or Malta, and that's traffic jams.
In an effort to improve the port's traffic, Cisco, together with companies like AGT, Kiwi, T-Systems, and World Sensing, will be implementing a traffic monitoring solution that can analyze street cams data and detect incidents.
Faces and license numbers will be automatically blurred out to protect user privacy according to German laws, and using real-time data provided by a special dashboard, port managers will be able to report incidents to the proper city authorities right away.
Since the Port of Hamburg also features a lifting bridge, structural sensors will optimize traffic flow and help port authorities find the appropriate times of day and year to perform maintenance operations without disrupting traffic or the harbor's activities.
Environment sensors will also be fitted all around the port to get real-time information about humidity, temperatures, winds, and so on while a smart lighting solution developed together with Philips will reduce street lighting costs.
Only a proof of concept right now
Cisco's smartROAD project is only a prototype for now and is a daring effort in implementing the Internet of Things in a city's day-to-day life for the first time in the company's history.
If the project proves itself to be helpful and cost-effective, it will be expanded to the rest of the city, and Cisco can then enhance its business portfolio with a whole new service offering that can be very profitable in the immediate future.
