“Smartest” street showcases IoT

18 July 2018

Mosley Street was the world’s first street to be lit by an incandescent lightbulb. According to Cisco, it will now achieve another feat as the UK’s smartest street.

Mosley Street was the world’s first street to be lit by an incandescent lightbulb. According to Cisco, it will now achieve another feat as the UK’s smartest street.

Newcastle is claimed to have become home to the UK’s smartest street as part of the Great Exhibition of the North. Mosley Street and the connecting Neville Street will be equipped with IoT sensors to showcase the possibilities of smart city technologies.

Until 9 September, visitors will be able to experience several smart city applications which will be available either at the street installation, or through data displayed on screens throughout the city and integrated with the exhibition Wayfinding App.

The project will combine live and historic data on the street from several sources, including Newcastle University’s Urban Observatory which is said to house the country’s largest set of real-time urban data.

The smart city applications being showcased include: using data trends to predict whether you’ll be able to find a parking spot; using predictive analytics to enable power companies to manage energy consumption more effectively and improve safety with lighting; using AI and video analytics to predict the effect of traffic on the road surface; amongst others.

All of the applications are facilitated by Cisco Kinetic for Cities which has been developed to provide a single platform for all smart city use cases. The company says this securely connects data from all kinds of devices, sensors, cameras, applications, etc., in an open, standards-based infrastructure.

Connexin has designed and built the infrastructure to support the smart city solutions in Newcastle. It has integrated sensors and cameras onto the network, providing a dashboard via Cisco Kinetic where data can be tracked and monitored.

Other partners include Mayflower which has supplied its Central Management System to provide remote control, monitoring and energy measurement of street lighting over a wireless interface (ZigBee/GPRS). Quantela is the project’s integration and AI partner.