Panelists at the Smart Cities Connect 2019 conference discussed smart mobility and transportation issues. Photography by Phil Goldstein
Virginia Beach is working with the Safety through Disruption University Transportation Center at Virginia Tech to maximize the benefits of disruptive technologies such as connected and automated vehicles, big data analytics and Transportation as a Service.
The city, which consistently ranks in the top 10 crash cluster locations in Virginia, wants to set up a smart corridor with 22 intersections to collect data and make transportation more efficient. A long-term goal, Reel said, is to use a cloud platform to collect and analyze all of the data the city collects.
John Jackson, city manager of Greenwood Village, Colo., used to be the city’s police chief and thought that transportation was something the city could fix easily. “Public safety is easier, trust me,” he said.
The city has chosen to focus on improving roadway infrastructure, transportation demand management and technology. However, he noted, the city has more data that it can handle. The goal is to get a better handle on the data that the city has already, he said.
“We need to know what we have and that what we’re utilizing is working before going any further,” he said, adding that Greenwood Village does not want to merely chase “the next shiny object.”
All cities have common infrastructure, such as streetlights and traffic signals, Jackson said. “We need to find ways to use current infrastructure in a smarter, better way,” he said, noting that control of the power grid is key.
Reel agreed and said that cities need to make the existing infrastructure they have smarter and work with their traffic management centers. She also hinted at the power of edge computing and putting sensors in cabinets and other IT facilities in the city.
Since technology changes so rapidly, Reel recommended that cities start small and scale up in technology deployments. However, she also said cities need to build cloud architectures from commercial providers like Microsoft to gather data and serve as long-term platforms for data analysis.
Read more articles from StateTech’s coverage of the Smart Cities Connect 2019 conference here.