San Diego Debuts Smart City Apps & Intelligent Lighting Controls from Current by GE

The City of San Diego, which announced last year it is building the world’s largest smart city IoT platform, recently revealed several system enhancements. In partnership with Current, powered by GE, San Diego is rolling out new digital applications to improve parking, traffic and public safety on city streets. In addition, the city has committed to adding another 1,000 CityIQ sensor nodes plus a lighting controls utility interface that will boost LED streetlight efficiency by an additional 20 percent.

All told, the project’s digital infrastructure will include 4,200 new CityIQ nodes installed across 14,000 new individually metered LED fixtures. The initiative is expected to save the city an estimated $3.6 million annually in energy and maintenance costs while enabling a plethora of open data APIs and smart city applications that will help solve some of the city’s biggest challenges. Several city departments, including the Office of Economic Development, San Diego Police Department and Traffic Engineering and Operations are already working with CityIQ data to improve traffic flow and pedestrian safety.

“Our ability to leapfrog our smart cities technology ahead in both energy savings and scale is a testament to the hard work and ongoing collaboration of many public and private stakeholders,” explained Erik Caldwell, Interim Deputy Chief Operating Officer, San Diego. “We are proud of our progress so far in building a solution that will stand the test of time and enhance our citizens’ quality of life.”

Current is working with AT&T and Intel on the project. The CityIQ sensors are powered by the AT&T LTE network to provide secure, reliable connectivity. Intel IoT technologies in each intelligent node provide compute power, help extract metadata, and perform multi-sensor fusion over a secured cloud connection.

“San Diego once again is setting a great example for other cities to follow. Using this rich dense data, the city can develop plans and implement solutions that impact critical citizen issues – all through their app store,” said Austin Ashe, GM, Intelligent Cities, Current by GE. “The possibilities are limitless for San Diego to unlock the potential of the data and use it to benefit both city operations and citizens, today and in the future.”

Ashe said the turnkey approach of providing apps and CityIQ hardware together will save time and money for cities hoping to do what the app store did for smartphones - spawning entrepreneurship, creating jobs, generating revenue and solving problems.

To learn more about San Diego and the world’s largest IoT platform, click here.