The plans to turn Dun Laoghaire Rathdown into a smart city!
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk.
What is Dun Laoghaire Rathdown's plan for becoming a smart city?
Ireland's richest local authority, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, is soon to equip many of its dozens of vehicles with new sensors and measuring devices in order to make that part of Dublin a so-called smart city. The idea is to gauge where the worst pollution or most stubborn traffic are in the county and get the private sector to help rectify problems. Ronan Herron is the Digital Strategy Officer with Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and is sitting in front of me. Good morning, Ronan. Morning, Joe. What is a smart city and what use is it to ordinary people?
How will sensors improve traffic and pollution monitoring?
Well, from the point of view of local authority, we're in the business of delivering services to our citizens and businesses. And any way that we can deliver the services more efficiently, that falls broadly within the area of smart cities. Smart cities programs that I'm involved in, we look particularly at things like emerging technology. data and the opportunity to bring businesses and the research community together to solve ongoing city problems.
So I mentioned that you're going to equip some of your vehicles, and you'll have quite a few of them driving around the county, with sensors. So are they going to go to traffic hotspots to measure pollution levels, for example, or traffic levels, or what are they going to do?
What role does data play in enhancing city services?
What they're going to do is carry out their normal day-to-day work. What we're looking at is the opportunity that the local authority has a fleet. We also, from a statutory point of view, we have to report on noise, on air quality. So we do deploy sensors in that regard, but they're stationary sensors. What about if we took the approach much like Google Street View, for example, instead of having a sensor in one place, equip the vehicle, with something on the roof that looks like one of those old-class air vents. But that modular mobile sensing platform, you can plug in any sensor, gather the data, do the analysis, and therefore improve the service delivery. So instead of having air quality for discrete spots around the county, you can have a map.
Google tried this within the Smart Dublin program previously.
How does the mobile sensing platform work for urban data collection?
So we took the Google Street View vehicle and equipped it with air sensors. We're taking that idea to the next level and creating an urban mobile sensing platform. So that will generate data that we can action through our service delivery.
And when you say action, what do you mean? I mean, if you're driving through Ranla, for example, it's a very busy place during the day. You're not going to reroute the traffic.
No, you're not. But what you're going to do is you're going to build up data and by running the analytics over time, you can inform projects. For example, the Junction 14 upgrade. We've deployed a lot of... Junction 14 upgrade on... On the M50. On the M50, yeah. Which Denleary just announced last week or the week before.
Make it easier to get on and off the M50.
Yeah, well, we already have really strong data on what the traffic flows are around Sandiford. So that informs the planning for how that road junction will actually be implemented.
What partnerships are essential for the smart city initiative?
What roads will be closed when, how cyclists behave. So this is kind of an extension of that approach. And by working with the research community, a big partner in this... So this is where the private sector comes in? Well, it's the private sector and the research community. So this programme is a partnership between Dun Laoghaire, Fingal and Trinity, Trinity's Connect programme. So without the research expertise to make sense of the data... then you're really, you're not at the game. But you also need to engage with the business community. So there's an Irish company called Edgeliot who are a partner. Volvo are a follower in this. They're really interested in what they're doing, what we're doing, because Volvo have been gathering data for years.
What are the expected outcomes of the smart city pilot program?
but they haven't been making use of it yet. We're going to bring the research element together, the use case together for the local authorities. So the use cases we're looking at is air quality, road condition and road signage.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:08
2
What is Dun Laoghaire Rathdown's plan for becoming a smart city?
0:08–0:37
3
How will sensors improve traffic and pollution monitoring?
0:37–1:22
4
What role does data play in enhancing city services?
1:22–2:13
5
How does the mobile sensing platform work for urban data collection?
2:13–3:06
6
What partnerships are essential for the smart city initiative?
3:06–3:47
7
What are the expected outcomes of the smart city pilot program?
3:47–4:30