Benefits
- A single platform and stakeholder specific apps for all maintenance and sensor monitoring operations
- Improved O&M efficiency with streetlights self-ticketing issues and Sensfix automating most of the service process
- Better citizen experience with the citizen app for reporting and monitoring streetlight issues
- AI and ML powers proactive maintenance to catch issues before they arise
- Ability to extend Sensfix to other city assets like traffic lights, pedestrian systems, and more
Among the aspiring smart cities of western Europe that stand out as a model for the rest of the world, is one BENELUX city that ranks in the top 20 in every indicator that measures cities’ standard of living. Thanks to its best-in-class public transit, commitment to bicycling, a focus on sustainability, and low-carbon solutions — and perhaps most important, a culture among its citizen more engaged in the journey towards more sustainable and smarter cities — it is one of the top 5 early adopters of new and emerging technologies for better living and well-being.City have thrived in public private partnerships focused on creating an urban laboratory for the use of open data, new mobility solutions and ultimately improved quality of life for all residents and visitors. Our client has supported more than 40 smart city projects showcasing newest innovations that affect every aspect of life and their proof of concept with Sensfix was no exception.
The Challenge
The city had recently started energy efficient LED light installations in several areas. Simultaneously, smart city administrators envisioned an overhaul of the processes for procurement, logistics, delivery, installation, and service of streetlighting. City administrators wanted to digitize and automate streetlight operations and maintenance so that city authorities had more visibility and control over how streetlight assets are repaired maintained, and so citizens could be informed in real0time about streelight maintenance and any inconvenience it might cause.
The city officials also wanted the city’s public asset operations and maintenance teams to use real-time operational intelligence coming in from various newly installed sensors on streetlight poles—these include pollution sensors, traffice data, smart 112, and smart police patrol. Better maintenace of these assets would improve citizens’ health, safety, and sustainability while also allowing for the optimization of costs, energy usage, city traffic, parking, and public information systems.
The city also needed to meet new sustainability targets and ensure compliance with smart city regulations. Achieving both of those goals would require a flexible, scalable, data-driven operating model focused on continual learning and adaptation.
Ultimately, they needed one unified platform to bring together disparate streetlight operations and maintenance processes to track service contracts, SLAs, various complaint mechanisms, hotline numbers, emailing services and maintenance ledgers. Existing software solutions like Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) were not working and they needed a solution to enable better system-wide decision-making, operational execution, and optimization.
The Solution
The initial Sensfix integration with the city’s existing systems just a few weeks thanks to Sensfix’s modular solution. Sensfix rolled out stakeholder specific web and mobile apps as well as a citizen app, and online collaborative platform where citizens, city officials, stakeholders of asset supply chain and service chain can monitor or control different phases of streetlight operations and maintenance.
After a brief onboarding and deployment, the first step was to aggregate streetlight data from all 720 different poles through various communication protocols like DALI, NB-IoT, LTE/4G, Sigfox, a job made easy with Sensfix’s IoT capability. Sensfix’s intuitive no-code rule engine allowed O&M managers to create rules that triggered appropriate actions based on data coming in from sensors including temperature, time of day, dimming levels, luminous intensity, current, voltage, and more. In addition, Sensfix built a automated decision-making rule framework that included environmental and operational parameters like inventory status, stock/spare part availability, tool availability, worker availability, permission grants, and warranty contract conditions.
For proactive streetlight maintenance, Sensfix uses AI and ML to identify anomalies and resolve streetlight faults and compliance violations, and to uncover opportunities for improved performance and energy savings. Sensfix automatically notifies all stakeholders in real-time on their apps enabling everyone to transparently trace all automated streetlight service actions that are stored in a tamper-proof manner.
Sensfix can now be extended to other public assets as well including traffic lights, pedestrian systems, emergency call boxes etc, and more. Teams can manage the operations & maintenance of assets, their performance, and sustainability from a single interface to deliver new experiences to citizens, new insights to city administrators and operators, and to fulfill the smart city’s vision for creating the smart streetlight operation & maintenance of tomorrow.
A quick overview of the sens-Citilight platform is shown in the illustrative youtube video below –>
Illustration: A top-level click-through demonstration of sens-Citilight platform