Edinburgh aims to future-proof its smart city infrastructure

Edinburgh in Scotland has completed the first phase of its smart city programme, saying that this lays the foundation to increase efficiency, reduce costs and provide better services for residents.

As well as launching a new Operations Centre that brings in real-time CCTV data with video analytics for public safety, transport management and urban planning, the city has implemented a foundational platform that can ingest data from various sensors, and also rolled out some early use cases.

Karin Hill, Programme Manager for Customer Transformation at City of Edinburgh Council, told Cities Today that future-proofing has been a key focus.

The Internet of Things (IoT) platform the city has deployed from its long-term IT partner CGI was selected because it’s technology-agnostic, says Hill.

“There are very few platforms like it that are currently in use – a lot of them are quite proprietary. [Ours is] agnostic to everything that sits around it so it does not matter what kind of sensor we onboard in the future; it will integrate with everything.”

She adds: “My ICT delivery partner describes smart cities as going to Mars for the first time, and that platform is building the Mars rover.”

Avoiding obsolescence

In addition, 11,000 sensors have been installed in waste bins to improve collection efficiency – the city chose this approach over readymade ‘smart bins’.

“Just having the sensor installed in the bin gave us greater flexibility,” explains Hill. “I compare it to two decades ago when televisions started being released with integrated DVD players. If that DVD player breaks, you’re replacing the television as well.”

“I’m really confident that this is the correct direction of travel,” she says. “You blink and something becomes obsolete so it was about trying to combat this.”

The city has also put 1,500 environmental sensors in council homes to help detect problems like damp early. Further plans include expanding environmental sensors to all 20,000 council homes as well as looking at air and water quality sensors and technology to address issues such as trade waste abuse, which can lead to fly-tipping.

As part of an intelligent infrastructure project, a digital Urban Traffic Management & Control system will be introduced. It will continuously receive data on journey times, traffic and air quality, then automatically make changes to signal timings to improve flow. The system is already credited with helping with the management of traffic disruptions from large events, roadworks and incidents on the trunk road network.

Challenges

While Hill says the city was able to achieve everything it set out to in its 2020 to 2023 roadmap, there were some challenges along the way. One was supply chain issues spurred by the pandemic.

“We had some project delays that we hadn’t anticipated at the start of the project,” she comments. “We weren’t the only people in that boat with global supply chain issues and it certainly wasn’t the fault of our suppliers. We were able to add some additional resources to the project to ensure that it was delivered on time.”

This was essential as the smart city work was part-funded through the European Regional Development Fund, meaning deadlines were fixed.

“If I’m being honest that’s part of the fun of doing these sorts of projects,” Hill says. “You’ve got to really think outside the box. You’ve got to get people that will just plough through a problem.”

The city is now working on the business case for the next phase of smart city projects that build on the foundations laid. Longer-term thinking is also underway.

“One of the things we’re keen to do, but it’s a much bigger project, is around smart buildings and how we use our buildings effectively and efficiently,” Hill says. “That’s going to be in future phases because the level of planning and the business case around it is much more complex to put together.”