COMMENT
Wireless
wayfinding:
roadmap for the
aspiring smart city
The smart city awaits; Kamal Mokrani, Global Vice
President at InfiNet Wireless discusses the importance
of laying the correct foundations that enable smart
cities to revolutionise everyday life.
W
e now find ourselves steeped
in the fourth Industrial
Revolution – an era that
could potentially see every one of us,
and every piece of machinery we use,
seamlessly networked together. Every
aspect of our lives, from our classroom
experiences to our daily commute, is
being digitised as we move inexorably
towards the smart city paradigm.
But unlike the jetpacks and flying cars
we looked forward to in the 1980s,
smart cities are not only more viable,
but are taking shape around us as you
read this.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
The way forward
So, what is the blueprint for the smart
society? What constitutes best practice?
And how can we ensure the foundations
are sound enough to support value-
adding solutions that revolutionise
everyday life?
The first thing to recognise is that legacy
cable infrastructures can only take the
smart city pioneer so far. Many of the
unique selling points of smart cities
involve the necessary feature of mobility.
Traffic optimisation, automated public
safety and remote health monitoring are
just three examples where key elements
of the ecosystem (such as vehicles, CCTV
cameras, people, etc.) can be anywhere,
with data made available to/from them
in real time. Hard-wired solutions severely
hamper the delivery of such solutions.
In addition, these cabled solutions
are extraordinarily disruptive in their
deployment, requiring significant
undertakings from the perspectives of
both civil engineering and the public
purse. Both factors also amount to
considerable lifespans for cabling
projects, thereby dampening the
momentum of smart city initiatives.
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