Cities Using Smart Street Lighting as a Platform for Smart City Applications

Smart street lighting is increasingly being recognized by city leaders as the first step toward the development of a smart city. Connected lighting systems enable immediate and significant energy savings through LEDs and controls while also providing a potential backbone network for cities to deploy additional smart city applications and services in a wide range of sectors. Growing numbers of pilot and large-scale projects are demonstrating the value of using a smart street lighting network as a broader platform for innovation.

From Networked Controls to a Smart City Platform

Sensors and other technologies can be added to a smart street lighting network to create a multitude of new city services, including gunshot detection, air quality monitoring, traffic management, and smart parking, among others. The types of smart city applications being used by cities on the smart street lighting platform vary tremendously by project. Security and public safety are some of the key applications currently being implemented in North America. As an example, Chattanooga, Tennessee is using smart LED street lights that can be remotely flashed to break up gang activity. And two other cities, Fresno, California and Peoria, Illinois, are using gunshot detection technology on their smart street lights to enable law enforcement to respond more quickly to shooting events. In Europe, several key projects are using lighting networks to improve pedestrian, bicyclist, and traffic management. Meanwhile, Asia Pacific is developing numerous projects using environmental sensors for air quality monitoring to address the heavy pollution levels in many of the congested cities in the region.

Boundless Opportunity

These extended capabilities provided by a smart street lighting platform enable cities to make further cost savings and add new and valuable city services. They also offer the potential for added revenue streams related to the lampposts. For example, in Los Angeles, smart poles are being installed with 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology to improve mobile phone coverage. The city is generating revenue by renting the poles to cell carriers.

The practice of utilizing smart street lighting networks as a platform for other smart city applications is still in its early stages. However, with several large deployments (e.g., in San Diego and Copenhagen) and an array of pilot projects currently underway, an increasing number of cities are beginning to understand the nearly unlimited potential that information and communication technology (ICT) can offer in improving city service delivery and management. For more information and analysis on this topic, keep an eye out for Guidehouse Insights’ forthcoming report, Smart Street Lighting for Smart Cities.