Do you want to live in a smart city? The citizens of San Jose, Calif., will soon learn what it’s like, thanks to a partnership between the city of San Jose and Intel (News - Alert). The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of life for residents there through the use of real-time data tracking of traffic flow, air quality and more. Application deployment is sure to play a part in this first of Intel’s smart city implementations in the U.S.
A six-month pilot program, this smart city is part of the White House SmartAmerica Challenge. Intel worked directly with San Jose to develop a platform to collect data on air, traffic and water quality, as well as a number of other stats. Intel would like to get a handle on all of the city’s vital stats so the information can be shared with government officials through mobile apps and APIs so as to inform the decision-making process.
Statistics captured will also be available to San Jose citizens, as the hope is that the more informed individuals will be more involved in the well-being of their city. There is also hope that the program will help in the creation of another 25,000 clean-tech jobs. The new infrastructure for monitoring and collecting data should help to drive this growth and create opportunities. Through application deployment, the right monitoring and collection points will capture information in real-time.
Such activity is expected to take place beyond San Jose as Intel has expressed its vision to expand the smart city to other municipalities. Growing urbanization is a current reason cited by the technology giant for implementing smart city technology throughout the country and even the global market. In fact, San Jose’s sister city of Dublin is also running a test pilot of the smart city program using Intel technology. Intel will use these experiences to refine its platform for the collection and analysis of data.
According to Intel VP, Ton Steenman, the evolution of the program will help Intel address additional issues, such as the quality of street lights. While the company is taking a large scale approach to the project, drill-down opportunities are likely to arise as the project progresses. At that time, Intel and the city of San Jose will have to address how they will handle privacy issues or other concerns that could arise among the citizen base. Hopefully the benefits produced can help offset concerns that are sure to rise to the surface at some point in this process.
For companies like UNICOM (News - Alert), the opportunity to lend application deployment expertise to projects like this creates opportunity to improve processes for future initiatives. As cities and their citizens become more engaged in the process of evaluating their environments and creating opportunities for improvement, the outcome is sure to be a win for all.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson