Big Brother Style Operating System to Run Entire Cities
Urban OS Sensor System Could Soon Be Running Entire Cities
October 4, 2011The Engineer - A new system of widely distributed sensors could soon be responsible for running entire cities.
Dubbed Urban OS, the system relies on the devices placed in the urban environment to provide data and analyse events in order to keep buildings, traffic and services running smoothly.
Living PlanIT, the company behind Urban OS, claims its technology will make cities more efficient and environmentally sensitive.
John Stenlake, chief technology officer at Living PlanIT, said:
‘We’re a technology company producing a software platform that enables an ecosystem to deliver better results, such as more sustainable buildings and infrastructure.
‘One example scenario of how our system could benefit a city is its ability to provide detailed information to a fire crew, which will then be able to deal with an incident much more effectively when it gets there.
‘The system will top up the water mains so that there is sufficient pressure; control traffic management systems in order to keep other traffic out of the way; and unlock doors and windows.
‘By joining up a few simple things like this, you can literally save minutes, which can ultimately save lives.’Stenlake explained that the system has been designed so that there is more than one level of equipment that can take over in case of a failure.
High sensor densities mean that the system is never reliant on a single sensor or sensor type. He said that the system can also display evacuation messages on smart walls, LED clusters and input panel screens.
The underlying technology for the Urban OS has been developed by McLaren Electronic Systems, which has also created an extensive set of application services that will run Urban OS. These applications have been dubbed ‘PlaceApps’ and they are the urban-environment equivalent of apps on a smartphone.
Steve Lewis, Living PlanIT’s chief executive officer, told the BBC that, eventually, applications on smartphones could hook into the Urban OS to remotely control household appliances and energy systems.
Living PlanIT intends to implement its initial operating system in Paredes, a municipality close to Porto, Portugal. The total cost of this project is expected to be between €8bn and €10bn (£7bn and £8.6bn).
Stenlake said:
‘[Lewis] saw an opportunity to develop the Living PlanIT idea and was looking for a place to build this prototype/R&D facility in city form. It was a large area of high-quality land where both local and national governments were looking to attract inward investment.
‘Also, there is a labour pool that consists of some very high-quality graduates who have studied technology and science subjects. It was the perfect storm of provisioning and opportunity,’ he explained.
There are also projects in Greenwich and Wembley in the pipeline, and discussions are going on in Silicon Valley, Singapore and the Middle East.
Living PlanIT, the Portuguese smart city initiative, was selected as one of the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers of 2012.
Stenlake said: ‘We’ve been completely knocked out by the reception we’ve had with… analysts and commentators. We’re very pleased the World Economic Forum has recognised the value of what we’re doing.’
Smart Cities Get Their Own Operating System
Smart cities with devices chatting to each other may dot the planet in the near futureSeptember 30, 2011
BBC - Cities could soon be looking after their citizens all by themselves thanks to an operating system designed for the metropolis. The Urban OS works just like a PC operating system but keeps buildings, traffic and services running smoothly.
The software takes in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what is happening.
The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area. The sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms.
The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life.
Urban OS should mean buildings get managed better and gathering the data from lots of sources gives a broader view of key city services such as traffic flows, energy use and water levels.
"If you were using an anatomy analogy, the city has a network like the nervous system, talking to a whole bunch of sensors gathering the data and causing actions," said Mr Lewis.Having one platform managing the entire urban landscape of a city means significant cost savings, implementation consistency, quality and manageability, he added.
"We distribute that nervous system into the parts of the body - the buildings, the streets and other things.
"And it's got local computing capacity to allow a building or an automotive platform to interact with people where they are, managing the energy, water, waste, transportation, logistics and human interaction in those areas."The underlying technology for the Urban OS has been developed by McLaren Electronic Systems - the same company that creates sensors for Formula One cars. The Urban OS was unveiled at the Machine-2-Machine conference in Rotterdam.
To support the myriad of different devices in a city the firm has developed an extensive set of application services that will run Urban OS, dubbed PlaceApps - the urban environment equivalent of apps on a smartphone.
Independent developers will also be able to build their own apps to get at data and provide certain services around a city.
Mr Lewis said that eventually applications on smartphones could hook into the Urban OS to remotely control household appliances and energy systems, or safety equipment to monitor the wellbeing of elderly people.
It could also prove useful in the event of a fire in a building, he said. In the event of a fire the Urban OS might manage traffic lights so fire engines can reach the blaze swiftly. Sensors would spot the fire and then the building would use its intelligence to direct people inside to a safe stairwell, perhaps by making lights flicker or alarms get louder in the direction of the exit.
"That's dealt with by the building itself, with the devices very locally talking to each other to figure out what's the best solution for the current dilemma, and then providing directions and orchestrating themselves," said Mr Lewis.'Magical actions'
Living PlanIT is working with Cisco and Deutsche Telekom on different parts of the system.
Markus Breitbach of the Machine to Machine Competence Center at Deutsche Telekom said that his firm was helping to bring all the parts of the Urban OS together.
"Everybody's talking about 50 billion connected devices, which effectively means huge amounts of data being collected, but nobody is really caring about managing it and bringing it into a context - and Urban OS can do just that," he said.
"If there's a fire alarm on the fifth floor and the elevator is going to the next floor, the light will switch on - but in addition the traffic lights will be switched accordingly to turn the traffic in the right direction so that fire workers can get through.
"And this is what Urban OS is providing, this kind of solution to analyse mass data, enter it in a context and perform magical actions."A test bed for the Urban OS is currently being built in Portugal. For its work in developing smart cities, Living PlanIT was selected as one of the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers of 2012.
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