Verizon turns street lights into smart city hubs

Verizon is touting its light sensing platform, showing how ITS intelligence can live and be managed inside street lights. “We’ve essentially turned the light pole into a network device that can interact with a variety of modular sensors and push data to the cloud,” said Destah Owens, a solutions architect for Verizon’s Smart Community group.
June 8, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
© F11photo | Dreamstime.com

1984 Verizon is touting its light sensing platform, showing how ITS intelligence can live and be managed inside street lights.

“We’ve essentially turned the light pole into a network device that can interact with a variety of modular sensors and push data to the cloud,” said Destah Owens, a solutions architect for Verizon’s Smart Community group.

Basic functionality of the light sensing technology allows cities to adjust ambient lighting on demand or on a variable schedule - such as when a convention is in town or other entertainment event. However, Owens said that cities are really excited about the modular ability to add other sensors - essentially using the street light as the smart city hub. Video analytics, parking enforcement, motion sensors and other sensors can be added to the light pole - collecting vital traffic, enforcement and mobility information and sending it to the cloud where a variety of stakeholders can access and analyse it for many different applications.

“It really allows stakeholders to figure out what is going in their city and figure out how they can increase mobility, provide safety or make any number of changes,” Owens said.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Vision technology: the future in focus
    November 23, 2018
    Just a few years ago, terms such as ‘embedded’ and ‘polarisation’ were buzzwords. But now they are real and present examples of vision technology in action – and, Adam Hill finds, the ITS industry is waking up to a number of possible applications Every aspect of the intelligent transportation systems industry moves quickly – but developments in camera technology change with a rapidity which can appear quite bewildering. And with ITS providers constantly searching for an edge against fierce competitio
    Read More
  • ITS European Congress: safer and cleaner mobility
    August 6, 2019
    Smart mobility and the increasing digitalisation of transport were among the main themes of this year’s ITS European Congress in the Netherlands. Ben Spencer picks some highlights from conference sessions which considered possible future developments Navigating between the Evoluon conference centre - a former science museum that resembles a giant-sized UFO - and an automotive campus, there was a lot to see at the 13th ITS European Congress in Brainport, Eindhoven. Organised by Ertico – ITS Europe and th
    Read More
  • Options abound for road weather sensing
    September 6, 2017
    Meteorological organisations invest millions in super-computers to crunch data for ever-more accurate forecasts but inherent unpredictability means that other methods of alerting drivers and road authorities to fast-changing weather and highway conditions are essential. For years, static weather sensors to measure factors such as surface water, ice or high roadway temperatures have been embedded in highways to provide such data. But that is changing.
    Read More
  • PTV sets its sights on Smart City solutions
    February 9, 2017
    Making a city smarter not only relies on understand technological opportunities but also human decision-making, as Miller Crockart explains. Cities are about people – a fact that can easily be forgotten when experts talk about roads, healthcare and education as though they are abstract and unconnected monoliths rather than things people use. Understanding how and why people use services is vital for making decisions on how they can be optimised for maximum efficiency across inter-connected networks that for
    Read More

Highlighted Content