Smart cities: Why a reliable CMS is crucial

We live in sentient cities, where urban devices and applications are connected via the Internet of Things and can be controlled remotely. Digital automation, energy efficiency, and cost saving are usually the first questions a city is presented with by residents and stakeholders. These are issues that already top city leaders’ agendas, but nowadays there is a pressing call to go further.

People want to live in environmentally friendly and safe cities, where services run smoothly and are accessible to all. They ask for superior quality of life, for their districts to be attractive. The bar is definitely high for city managers willing to meet citizens’ rising expectations and demands.

“Today, being smart is not only about providing automated services, but having a comprehensive view of how the city works and what happens in real-time, and being able to connect the dots. This enables city managers to take informed decisions and contribute to future-proof, resilient communities”, says Luciano Fontana, Product Manager at technology company Paradox Engineering, MinebeaMitsumi Group.

Eliminating silos

Cities are abandoning the siloed approach to urban services in favour of central management systems (CMS) to control multiple applications at once, including street lighting, mobility, municipal solid waste collection, environmental monitoring, and more.

An integrated CMS allows the timely monitoring of single urban services. At the same time, it offers the possibility of correlating different applications to act when necessary. For instance, the programmed schedule of streetlights in a certain district can be modified in real-time if additional brightness is needed (for example, when a road accident is reported, or the car park is particularly busy, or when waste collection trucks are operating) or lighting should be lowered to save power (such as when an earthquake or an extreme weather event is detected, or the stability of the energy grid is at risk). The CMS also provides accurate, multi-application reports of energy consumption and devices’ operating conditions, supporting proactive maintenance for further savings in time and money.

“A unified, reliable CMS is a real added value for a smart city. It allows the effective control of urban applications and facilitates evidence-based decisions related to service quality and continuity, environmental sustainability, public safety, and people’s well-being,” adds Fontana.

The Smart CMS

Paradox Engineering has recently introduced version 7 of its Smart CMS, the open management platform for cities looking for full interoperability and the highest possible scalability. It manages both small and large networks with hundreds of thousands of objects, with improved device control features to easily connect additional equipment, monitor and manage single or grouped nodes.

Available on-premise or in the cloud, the software platform oversees both narrowband IoT networks and sensor-based applications such as street lighting, parking management, or environmental monitoring, as well as broadband services.

The latest version features new energy report and event management applications, and a completely refreshed user experience with a customizable dashboard to display ready-to-use insightful data.

“City managers will appreciate our new Smart CMS and the opportunity to control heterogeneous urban networks and IoT devices from a single console. Monitoring and operating public service has never been so intuitive and effortless,” comments Fontana.

About Paradox Engineering

Established in 2005 and headquartered in Switzerland, Paradox Engineering is the Internet of Things (IoT) Excellence Centre of MinebeaMitsumi Group. The company pioneers technologies to implement highly scalable IoT network solutions, from edge devices to management platforms, to control critical public services such as streetlighting, parking management, municipal waste collection, and environmental monitoring. Thanks to intelligent technology solutions, Paradox Engineering strives to unleash opportunities for people and communities, helping the transition towards more liveable, sustainable, and smarter cities.

For further information, please visit https://www.pdxeng.ch