4 Canadian Cities Up for a Smart 50 Award

March 3, 2018

Four cities are vying in three categories with competitors from around the world for a Smart 50 award. Winners will be announced at a gala on March 26, 2018 in Kansas City, Missouri.

The annual Smart 50 Awards, in partnership with Smart Cities Connect, Smart Cities Connect Foundation, and US Ignite, recognize global smart cities projects, honouring the most innovative and influential work. This year, primary categories included governance, mobility, energy, citizen life, and networks.

“We were overwhelmed with strong submissions from over one dozen countries and covering solution areas from waste management to smart glass to safer streets,” says Smart Cities Connect managing editor Laura Benold. “Smart projects are happening all around us in ways that aren’t always apparent, and we want to shed light on those.”

The four Canadian cities and their categories are

• Montreal, Quebec — energy
• Campbell River, BC and Richmond Hill, ON — networks
• Richmond, BC — governance

Summaries of each city’s project appear below.

Montreal, Quebec

Project name: Montreal Smart Public Lighting Control Project. The city is modernizing its 250,000 luminaires and implementing a central management system. From a desire to be independent from a unique supplier in the future, they selected three different manufacturers and a single CMS solution. This system lays the foundation of a communication network enabling integration of additional smart-services.

Among the benefits:

• a more uniform and natural lighting effect
• substantial savings — $219 million over 20 years when combining electricity savings and maintenance costs
• control and monitoring of each luminaire remotely, with the advantage of knowing in real time the energy consumption of each lamppost, receiving power failures alerts when they happen, and adjusting light intensity as needed directly from a single smart cities management platform
• the potential to connect and manage other smart services to this network, such as digital-signage, motion-sensors, sewer-level detectors, cameras, etc.
• reduced electricity consumption by 35% a year, and greenhouse gases by 123 tons/year
• reduced maintenance costs by 55% a year

The project is expected to recoup its costs within eight years.

Richmond Hill, Ontario

Project Name: Richmond Hill Smart Street Lighting Conversion Project by Ameresco

Ameresco successfully designed, planned and installed approximately 13,000 smart street lights and SLV communications network, in the process replacing high-pressure sodium lights, saving an estimated $700,000 in annual operations costs, and enabling future smart city applications.

Ameresco deployed the SLV platform from Silver Spring Networks to provide a smart lighting control system to improve operation and maintenance capabilities and provide a platform for future ‘Smart City’ applications.

The communications network enables users to control a vast ecosystem of smart city devices, including street light controllers, electric vehicle charging stations, pollution sensors, traffic cameras, parking space detection, and more.

Richmond, BC

Project Name: MyRichmond. By interacting and collaborating with the city via the MyRichmond system, residents gain personalized access to online services 24/7, from any device. The project collects, integrates, analyzes and acts on data to promote health, improve public safety, reduce pollution and increase efficiency.

MyRichmond will enable customer-centric services to

• reduce congestion and pollution by optimizing commuter, freight and emergency traffic flow; provide real-time traffic information to residents
• improve community safety through an interactive crime map providing crime information and safety prevention tips
• connect families looking for childcare through the Childcare Locator on Richmond Interactive Map (RIM)
• promote healthy living with an integrated recreational system offering personalized content with digital Recreation cards
• encourage water conservation and identify water leakage on private property through utilities usage online and mobile devices
• improve building and gas inspections turn-around-time for customers through mobile inspections app that integrates with a backend inspections system
• encourage tourism with self-guided video walking tours at tourist hotspots, using the innovative iBeacon technology

In the process, MyRichmond will transform customer experience shifting from service-centric or department-centric to customer-centric.

Campbell River, BC

Project Name: Campbell River Advantage Network

The network provides affordable, symmetrical (identical upload and download) bandwidth scalable to 1 gigabit per second in Campbell River’s downtown core, positioning the city as a strategic location for entrepreneurs, start-ups, businesses, and families.

The nonexclusive open-access business model allows third party (wholesale and incumbent) service providers to lease access to the network from the City and provide a range of broadband Internet services to the integrated buildings in the downtown core.

CRadvantage improves on existing service offerings in the downtown core including:

• creating a vibrant and safe downtown core through the implementation of digital media, public WIFI, IoT and intelligent surveillance
• providing a foundation for SMART community initiatives

Find out more about these projects: https://spring.smartcitiesconnect.org/Smart50Awards/.