Jason Tyre, Business Development Manager, Cities at Milestone Systems explores how open platform video technology is powering greener cities and increasing sustainability.

Urban living and sustainability

Urban populations are exploding. In 1950, just 29% of the global population lived in cities.

Today, over half of all people reside in urban areas and by 2050, a staggering 68% of the world’s projected population — an additional 2.5 billion people – will be crowded into cities.

This exponential growth brings immense challenges but also opportunities to construct smarter, greener urban centers.

Open platform, data-driven video technology may enable cities to rise and meet pressing sustainability targets while improving safety and quality of life.

The smarter city movement

Forward-thinking municipalities around the globe — like Copenhagen, which is on track to become the world’s first carbon-neutral smart city by 2025 — are embracing internet of things (IoT) devices such as sensors, data analytics and security cameras to enhance city operations and management as well as increase sustainability.

When powered by open platform data-driven video management software (VMS), these innovations help city managers visualize vast amounts of data from different devices on a single pane of glass.

This, in turn, enables city managers to improve public services, reduce costs, advance sustainability and elevate the safety and well-being of citizens.

Today’s cities grapple with pressing challenges like worsening traffic congestion, excessive energy consumption, water scarcity, waste management inefficiencies, dangerous air pollution, public health threats and strained policing resources that impact their level of sustainability.

By employing an open platform, data-driven VMS that can process and unify all IoT data, smart cities are able to mitigate complex urban challenges to optimize resource allocation and infrastructure investments.

In smart cities, expansive sensor networks generate massive datasets by continuously measuring factors like air particulate counts, environmental noise levels, traffic flows, building energy loads, water usage and more.

When this is combined with intelligent video analytics software, these rich data streams are converted into simplified status dashboards, notifications and models, which reveal invisible insights and patterns.

City departments can use this intelligence to enable automated, real-time optimizations of urban systems, from transit signaling to irrigation control, reducing waste while improving service quality and sustainability.

For example, the City of Tlaxcala, Mexico, combined high-definition smart cameras with smart video analytics software to significantly shorten response times to traffic incidents, reducing related congestion and emissions.

Meanwhile, the City of Vicente López in Argentina uses capabilities such as traffic monitoring, vehicle tracking and waste overflow alerts to optimize transportation flows, parking, routing and collections — decreasing the city’s carbon footprint.

Each municipality also employs sophisticated integrations between diverse sensors, legacy systems and dashboards to coordinate unified responses that conserve resources.

The flexibility of open platform video technology

As urban centers get smarter, video technology is proving invaluable for collecting visual data that cities can utilize to drive decision-making and strategic responses.

Leading intelligent video analytics software can automatically detect threats and operational events of interest like traffic accidents, critical infrastructure leaks, trash overflow, wildfires and more.

Automated alert notifications can trigger a real-time emergency response by the proper city agencies, while continuous data storage aids in post-event investigations.

Analyzing archived video data also enables processes that can retrospectively reveal macro-level trends, patterns and correlations, allowing strategic infrastructure improvements and policy changes to optimize operations.

Sustainability applications for open-platform, data-driven video technology can include:

Environmental monitoring: deploying a VMS with integrated air quality, noise detection and video analytics throughout an urban landscape provides extensive sensory inputs.

Central monitoring can track pollution levels across the city and correlate spikes with potential causes like congestion chokepoints or industrial facility incidents to determine swift and appropriate interventions.

By quickly detecting and addressing pollution sources, cities can reduce the impact of environmental harm.

Other key applications include sustainability policy compliance auditing, asset maintenance scheduling and incorrect recycling detection.

Waste and water management: networks of smart trash bin sensors regulate collection by detecting real-time fill levels at public trash and recycling receptacles.

With this information, managers can optimize waste truck paths to only empty full containers, reducing fuel waste from unnecessary stops, thus reducing noise and emissions.

Reservoirs, watersheds and pipe network cameras help managers practice water conservation during droughts.

Traffic optimization: strategically positioned traffic light and roadway cameras provides comprehensive, 24/7 vehicle traffic flow monitoring.

Integrated analytics software leverages video and other data like inductive loop vehicle detection to optimize traffic signaling timing dynamically.

By perpetually adjusting the green/red light cycles based on actual real-time volumes, cities alleviate unnecessary congestion and reduce vehicle emissions from excessive idling.

License plate recognition technology, combined with video data evidence, can identify vehicles violating environmental policies like idling limits or bypassing congestion tolling fees.

Bike lane use: tracking cyclist traffic counts and ride patterns via designated bike lane video sensors allows municipalities to prioritize bicycle infrastructure investments where designated routes prove underutilized versus overcrowded.

Path enhancements also incentivize residents to choose cycling for short trips, facilitating green, emission-free mobility.

Pedestrian support: Video analytics and sensors tracking pedestrian traffic patterns allow cities to optimize walkway and trail infrastructure.

Understanding high-demand routes and where bottlenecks occur enables strategic expansions of sidewalks, the optimization of crosswalk timers and multi-use paths to incentivize residents to walk or bike rather than drive vehicles for short trips around the city.

The power of the open platform

To maximize capabilities, cities need a flexible VMS capable of assimilating diverse data inputs, including camera feeds, sensor readings, GPS coordinates, scanner outputs and more.

The VMS must also natively control security cameras and other connected devices regardless of manufacturer.

Open platform, data-driven VMS provides the flexibility required for aggregating citywide systems.

Open platform VMS offers incredible versatility thanks to its available application programming interfaces (APIs).

These interfaces allow the VMS to ingest and correlate data from virtually any sensor source.

Developers can build custom integrations between new and legacy systems, spanning gunshot acoustic detection, air quality monitors, license plate readers and beyond.

The open APIs also ensure end users aren’t locked into proprietary technology vendors or ecosystems. Cities can seamlessly deploy innovative new sensors and software solutions as technologies develop without needing to prematurely rip and replace their existing systems, saving substantial taxpayer funds.

An open platform VMS is becoming essential in city management.

It gathers data from a vast range of data sources, storing it in a central hub for easy access and analysis.

The VMS offers visual alarm verification and applies machine learning to detect patterns and anomalies in the data, offering insightful operational and security perspectives.

The vision for next-gen cities

By bringing together multiple dynamic data sets with centralized controls, tomorrow’s cities can optimize operations today while sustainably evolving for future generations.

From enhanced traffic patterns to optimized waste collection efficiencies, from curbed emissions to efficient civic services, the advantages of data-driven smart cities are tremendous and wide-ranging.

As cities accelerate smart infrastructure rollouts to boost sustainability, public safety and quality of life for increasing populations, flexible, open platform, data-driven video platforms will serve an increasingly vital role.

For video security professionals, this drive presents considerable opportunities to participate in creating resilient city management systems.

By delivering open and integrated possibilities, video technology can empower city managers to design tomorrow’s efficient, sustainable, safe and livable metropolitan areas.

The smart/green city revolution is underway — and video technology is at the forefront, driving this transformation.

About the author

Before joining Milestone Systems as a Business Development Manager for Cities, Jason Tyre served with the Phoenix Police Department for more than 18 years.

He was assigned to the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, where he was a founding member of the State of Arizona’s Threat Mitigation Unit and worked closely with the US Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect critical infrastructure in the State of Arizona.

This article was originally published in the Special February Influencers Edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.