Cisco Shows How to Make Cities Smart

Cisco has unveiled its Smart+Connected Digital Platform for ‘smart cities’ – a pay-as-you-go cloud-hosted service aimed at cities and towns that want to take a ‘smart’ approach but lack their own expertise of resources, Cisco said that ten cities worldwide are already using its platform to connect to traffic, parking and environmental sensors in real time. They include Paris, Copenhagen, Bucharest and Bangalore. The system uses a dashboard to analyse data and trigger appropriate actions. It can be used to monitor parking, street lighting traffic or crowds. It could be used, for example, to call for more public transport to be send to a crowded or redirect traffic around congested areas. Cisco is partnering with IBM to process the data and create actionable information.