Public Safety and Efficient Mobility
Another one of Coral Gables’ smart city initiatives is the city’s surveillance cameras, which can analyze what they record. This affects public safety: Camera footage has been used to help law enforcement identify missing persons and monitor criminal activity. At an event called Carnival on the Mile, Collazo recalled, a child went missing among the thousands of attendees.
“We have the technology to be able to see different things, so we can decipher if somebody with a white shirt was walking through, or somebody with a red hat,” Collazo said. “We called the cops immediately.” They were able to locate the child within minutes with the help of camera footage and analytics.
Cameras around Coral Gables also can detect how many parking spots in a lot are available. This enables a smart parking system, where residents can go online and see in real time which spots are open.
EXPLORE: How FirstNet is helping support local public safety agencies.
Using Integration Tools to Better Analyze Data
Collazo said the digital twin started with the vision of horizontal integration. Using a specialized tool, the city was able to aggregate data from all departments on one platform.
“We have all this data. It's great, but it does nothing unless you’re really showing it to people or doing something with it. As departments, we have all these cool little features that we keep within ourselves, and then other departments have cool features too. If we don't share that together, we're getting nowhere,” Collazo said. “So, the point was to increase citizen services to help our public safety, to share information with our urban planners and not only our residents but just every department within the city.”
“It's very rare to see all of this technology in one place actually integrated and working together. For me, that was the exciting part,” Hasan said.