Cary, in the U.S. town of Wake County, North Carolina is cooperating with SAS and Semtech to make its own town ever so slightly smarter. Applications of LoRaWan IoT technology are to help.
Cary: smart city for ten years
For more than ten years, the administration of the town of 175,000 inhabitants has been striving to constantly improve the living conditions of everyone on site. To this end, it entered into a cooperation with SAS back in 2007. The local analytics company’s main objective was to help drive the city’s development while increasing its security.
More efficient administration through data analysis
Cary uses SAS technology to collect and analyze data in order to derive new insights. The processed values enable city leaders to manage their own organizations’ processes more efficiently.
For example, the information from the surveys enables them to estimate anticipated staffing requirements, increase the work performance of their employees, significantly shorten decision-making periods and provide all employees with all the data they need, regardless of their status.
Semtech: new partner for resource optimization
The addition of Semtech to the existing partnership is intended to significantly expand the range of effects previously used for IoT applications. Particularly with regard to waste management and the energy industry, great things are hoped for from the liaison. In fact, it is believed that by detecting minor problems in the community, even global challenges can ultimately be solved.
IoT, LoRaWAN, Azure for insight
The city combines various systems to best address its concerns. For example, SAS’ IoT solutions provide city leaders with real-time insights into the data-driven day-to-day operations of their municipal infrastructure. The processing of the values generated in the process takes place in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Semtech’s LoRaWan technology provides the necessary connectivity.
LoRaWAN for crisis prevention
The city’s leaders were able to see early on what Semtech’s LoRaWAN technology could do for them. For example, the easy-to-integrate, energy-efficient and long-range technology has already proven to be an optimal tool to combat a recurring urban problem.
Every year, rainwater collects within the city in residential and commercial areas, causing flooding and damage to people and property. Until now, the response to this has always been short-term and situational.
IoT Storm Water Division for Storm Preparedness
With the implementation of IoT technology, there are now completely new possibilities. Streaming analytics and real-time access to historical city data put officials in a position where they no longer have to merely react to severe weather situations. They can now even anticipate them and take appropriate precautionary measures. This model has proven so successful that with the creation of a Storm Water Division, continuous monitoring of weather conditions is now possible.
This new division uses LoRa sensors that can be used to record water levels, precipitation amounts and flow velocities. The values generated in this way are compared with other weather charts in SAS’s Azure cloud in order to then derive the correct countermeasures.
The resulting suggested actions are then forwarded to the relevant city authorities and agencies. Town leaders now plan to extend this model to other Cary structures. The next field of action at the top of the agenda is the optimization of the traffic infrastructure.
