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12 steps to a Smart City By Henk de Graaf, Managing Director, Industrial Automation Group, Perth
The idea of a “smart city” sounds attractive but what is it? A smart city can be described as a place which has integrated information and communication technology with control systems to manage its assets. These assets could include schools, libraries, transport systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply networks, waste management and parks and gardens. Where once the irrigation assets in urban areas were treated separately from other assets, advances in automation and communication technology now allow for irrigation management to be integrated to maximise efficiency, energy savings and productivity. As this article by Henk de Graaf explains, the challenge is to work out the most effective and costefficient way for a city to be “smart”. 1. Identify your assets. Start by looking at what type of assets contribute to the functioning of the city. Think of assets that have some sort of control or monitoring functions. That might be the air conditioning system in the main office building or chlorination systems for the local pool and the irrigation system in the city parks. Assets that are important, but which cannot be directly controlled, like trees, would not be included in your list of assets for control. 2. Locate your assets. Now that you have made a list of the type of assets, find out where they all are so you can collate data about them. Knowing where items are gets you one step closer to getting relevant and detailed information about these assets. In addition, once all items are located, they can be identified on a Google map which will help with monitoring in the future. Remember that we are trying to improve the management of your assets (see map).
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SmartCity controllers mapped as a way of improving monitoring.
3. Select all information about these assets. Data can include manufacturers’ manuals, asbuilt drawings and other similar information. It also can include pricing information and supplier details. The more information you can gather, the easier it will be for maintenance staff or sub-contractors to maintain your assets. If you have paper drawings or manuals, save them in electronic format to provide remote access by multiple people. 4. Decide what you want to monitor. When deciding what to monitor, keep in mind the financial or operational effect on the organisation. There is always a risk of information overload and if the collected information is unlikely to be used, there is no point in collecting it. On one hand, there would be no point in recording the kilometres travelled in a vehicle if it is the council’s policy to replace them every two years anyway. On the other hand, recording the energy used at sporting fields fits because better management might allow the cost to be reduced.
The Overflow - Winter 2020
5. Select how you want the monitoring to take place. Monitoring can be done manually at fixed intervals or completely automatic via sensors and data recording hardware and software. So, if all you need is total power used and not when there are peaks and troughs, you select a different sensor. Similarly, if you want to be able to determine faulty lamps in a floodlight system, you will need to monitor the current draw to each lamp or sets of lamps which is something that a kWh reading will not tell you. You can also apply this logic to an irrigation system where, for example, you might monitor it on a valve-by-valve basis. 6. Decide who will have access to the monitored data. Some information that you gather might be confidential or could have the potential to affect a person’s position in the organisation (e.g. using a company vehicle for private purposes). It is therefore important to decide beforehand who will have access to the data. You may even choose to
