Smart cities will now have their own nervous system

Johannesburg - In the future a smart city will have its own ‘brain’, making them safer and more energy and water efficient. 

Numerous companies around the world are developing infrastructure and solutions for smart cities. 

Chinese electronics company, Huawei recently announced its Intelligent Operation Center (IOC) during the Global Smart City Summit, a solution which will function as the “brain” of the Smart City, connecting the digital and physical worlds. 

Yan Lida, president of Huawei Enterprise Business Group said that a smart city is like a living organism, which is powered by a nervous system. 

“This Smart City nervous system comprises a “brain” and “peripheral nerves”, gathering real-time information about the status of the city, transmitting the data, enabling the “brain” to analyze and make informed decisions, delivering feedback commands, and ultimately carrying out intelligent actions,” Lida said. 

The underlying infrastructure of the IOC comprises of distributed cloud data centers and ubiquitous city networks that collect, integrate and share city information, enabling real-time visibility of the city. 

The IOC uses an Integrated Communications Platform (ICP) that enables intelligent collaboration across city functions and emergency dispatch of all services. 

By using Big Data, machine learning and AI technologies, the IOC delivers valuable insights to facilitate city planning and management of vital services such as transportation and security.

Huawei also provides wired and wireless broadband, IoT platforms, and LiteOS – a secure, lightweight and intelligent operating system, that serve as the peripheral nervous system, collecting data to assist the brain in making decisions, which bring about changes in the physical world. 

For example, sensors for temperature, humidity and brightness in greenhouses provide real-time environmental data for the city operations control center, enabling the center to inform respective control devices to carry out adjustments when the thresholds are reached, to meet the specific environmental needs of the crops in each greenhouse.