UNLOCKING A SMARTER FUTURE

LDC London held its first CPD event, ‘Smart city – the holy grail?’, at the stunning venue of Southwark Cathedral in February. As we look forward (hopefully) to the resumption of LDC events in the autumn, here is a taste of just some of the CPD and insight that was on offer

By Jess Gallacher

After the past few months of restrictions and social distancing, the very idea of mingling shoulder to shoulder and networking at a Lighting Delivery Centre CPD event feels almost other-worldly. But the hope is, of course, that things will return to ‘normality’ (whatever that will look like) from the autumn and the ILP’s programme of regional and national CPD will resume.

Moreover, as I have highlighted on the previous pages, as the new ILP LDC network has become bedded in and established over the past year, the CPD and events each LDC delivers has gradually built its own momentum, and value, for members across the country.

To that end, as we look forward to the autumn programme, it seems appropriate to revisit one of the final LDC CPD events to happen before the March coronavirus lockdown – LDC London’s ‘Smart city – the holy grail?’ – which took place in February at the stunning location of Southwark Cathedral.

The intention here is, very simply, to give a flavour of the event and to highlight to members the value that can be gained from carving out the time to attend similar CPD and networking events within their local LDC once things do start to return to normal.

The event was sponsored by Zumtobel Group and brought together four speakers, David Orchard from Telensa, Ryan Carroll from Designs for Lighting, Perry Hazell from Southwark Council (and LDC chair), and Dan Hodgson from Zumtobel.

Although nominally themed around smart cities, the afternoon of CPD had a broader remit than simply connected or smart lighting, with two of the speakers (Ryan and Dan) looking at other areas, which we shall come to shortly.

OPPORTUNITY FOR NETWORKING

The event was also an opportunity for networking, with the CPD presentations being followed by an evening lighting display that showcased the products of Zumtobel brand acdc, illuminating the cathedral’s interior and exterior façade, and the outdoor lighting products of Zumtobel’s Thorn brand. The first speaker was David Orchard, EMEA sales manager at Telensa, discussing how to move smart cities ‘from buzzword to deployment’. David emphasised the need for lighting professionals to take and drive a holistic, whole-city, perspective when it comes to smart connecting lighting networks.

As he said: ‘The world is changing, we know that; we’ve been hearing that for a number of years now. It is becoming more connected, and smart street lighting is a key part of that. Proving that business case to our customers is critical to help them not only maximise energy savings, but also create a foundation for their future smart city ambitions.

‘Smart lighting controls increasingly make sense from an energy point of view as the price of energy continues to rise. The central management system or a smart lighting system enables customers to keep managing, controlling and tweaking the dimming profile of their lights to adapt to the changing needs of the city,’ he explained.

‘What does smart street lighting infrastructure provide in the wider smart technology context?’ David then questioned.

‘I think it is a given that, from a location point of view, it is great,’ he answered. ‘You have street lighting columns everywhere around the city, and even in most rural areas too. The streetlight provides a power source for other applications and creates a fixed data point when it comes to the asset management side of things.’

CHALLENGE OF THE BUSINESS CASE

One of the ongoing issues with the rollout (or not) of smart city connectivity has been who leads it or drives it at a municipal level. Who joins it all together (especially if there are multiple initiatives or pilots underway), who pulls the levers to make things happen, who signs off the budget? Within this, how do you build the business case to make this sort of joined-up thinking and investment happen? This was something David recognised in his presentation.

As he said: ‘I think it is a given that the smart city benefits are quite clear, whether it is the financial benefits in reducing costs, whether it is the social benefits of increasing efficiencies, or the more environmental benefits. Instrumenting cities can improve quality of life; that has got to be what smart cities are all about. We are the customers of the city; adding to the quality of life is paramount.

‘The business case for smart cities is less clear, however. Smart city technology is moving and emerging really quickly; the future is uncertain, and things seem to change on a daily basis. Cities and authorities come up against these questions all the time. What application am I looking for, what network should a city use? Cities have to predict

what their future infrastructure needs to be, yet at the same time often can’t,’ said David.

‘We hear about electric cars and we hear about autonomous vehicles and lots of other things, for example. When is it they’re coming in; how are they going to benefit the city? Cities know what they might go to and they know what their aspirations might be, but they don’t really know. Therefore, smart city infrastructure needs to be flexible and cities must adopt open technology. But then ‘‘open’’ also means different things to different people.

‘Where we are now, and probably where we’ve been now for a few years, is that there are many single-purpose applications. So, we hear about things such as smart bins or temperature sensors; single-purpose applications and hybrid networks; lots of little things happening: IoT, cellular and radio networks that run street lighting. There are lots of different networks out there,’ David argued.

He then cited the smart city work Telensa has been doing in Harrisburg, the capital city of Pennsylvania in the US. There, the city authorities have deployed Telensa’s PLANet smart street lighting controls as part of a conversion project to LED.

A key element of this has been focusing on ways to ‘monetise’ (or make money from) what is otherwise a free wireless network, money that can then be ploughed back into other city-wide benefits. For example, the network has been used to monitor refuse collection to make garbage truck pick-up routes more efficient. ‘They wanted to see whether there were operational savings to be made by not collecting every bin every day, or if that meant they were just over-filling,’ explained David.

LDC London chair Perry Hazell making his presentation at the LDC event

Sensors have been used to monitor road temperatures to make predictive models more accurate and save money on activities such as salt spreading during the winter. Another benefit has been in having the ability to reduce the lighting in industrial areas when traffic is low and then raise it up again as and when needed. ‘It enables you to get the energy savings from dimming the lighting down, but there is the fail-safe that if something were to happen the lighting will go back up again,’ David added.

Air quality monitoring has been a further important focus of the project. ‘By having localised air quality monitors, you can give cities the capability to map out high emissions spots,’ David said. ‘If we know where air quality problems are and it correlates with where traffic is bad, then we can start to do something about it.’

SMART CITY ‘DIGITAL TWINS’

Many cities, David suggested, were moving toward the concept of having a ‘digital twin’. Or as he explained: ‘Within a smart city environment, it is a virtual model of city IoT devices. So it is about building up a picture in real time of what is happening in a city, and then being able to replicate how a city’s physical assets interact with each other on a virtual platform. So correlating the air quality and traffic data and drawing insight which can be used to create services that improve citizen’s quality of life.’

When it comes to barriers to implementation, one of the main ones remained building the trust and engagement of citizens, especially in the context of data gathering, sharing and ‘ownership’. As David emphasised: ‘Citizens are the customer. They want, demand, transparency and democratic control of what is happening to what is, ultimately, their data. But there is a lack of resource within local authorities and within companies, and expertise, as to how to achieve this.’

He added: ‘In order to get to a “true” smart city, the industry needs to move to having an array of multi-purpose AI sensors to cover many, many different applications. And platforms that can combine but also protect data as well. If you can bring the cost of the products down and have products that are doing multiple things, and also a platform to deliver the trust infrastructure.’

David concluded by briefly explaining

Telensa’s ‘Urban Data’ research project. The project uses the Microsoft ‘Azure’ Cloud platform to create what it has termed as ‘a trust infrastructure for urban data’ or, in other words, a platform that cities can feel confident they can use to collect, use and most of all protect data, with the first deployment having taken place in Cambridge.

Data is collected via multi-sensor ‘pods’ installed on lighting columns, with sensors including video and radar. The data is then combined with other city data, with the ‘trust platform’ enabling cities to apply privacy policies and comply with data regulations as well as making data available to improve services and drive revenues.

Building – and communicating – this sort of trust infrastructure is vital because, as David highlighted, ‘we think the industry is moving towards a mass collection of data on a huge scale’.

As he added in conclusion: ‘So we can start to do really good things with data, rather than create siloed infrastructure with single-purpose applications. If we can drive the cost of those products down and make sense of the data and do the right things around privacy, then I think that smart cities have a good chance of really taking off.’

The next speaker was Ryan Carroll, lighting designer at Designs for Lighting, who spoke on ‘lighting to protect the environment’, in particular the challenges and considerations that need to be taken on board when lighting for sensitive environments.

His talk, which revisited the presentation he gave to the 2019 Professional Lighting Summit in Newcastle upon Tyne, was based around the work the practice had done on lighting the car park at the Dorothy House hospice care in Winsley, near Bradford-on-Avon, which won a Commission for Dark Skies ‘Good Lighting’ award in 2019.

As Ryan put it: ‘Sensitive sites require out-of-the-box thinking to ensure lighting is well implemented whilst fully considering the environmental challenges.

‘Whilst there are applicable British Standards, sometimes it is necessary to challenge these where the prescribed lighting parameters do not fully suit the application to which the proposed lighting is necessary.

‘If you’re involved in the design of a lighting solution for an environmentally sensitive site, there is not a one-size-fits-all rule in terms of the British Standards and guidance. You might find it just doesn’t work for a multitude of reasons. So, it is sometimes necessary to work outside of the comfort zone that the standards provide (providing this approach is risk assessment-based to justify your approach) and build it into your strategy. Of course, continuous liaison with the client is key, so you can provide a solution that suits all parties.’

FOCUS ON SOCIAL VALUE

Next to the podium was Perry Hazell, LDC London chair and business manager, Asset Management Services, at Southwark Council, who talked through some of the smart/ connected lighting work the council is undertaking.

This has included rolling out fibre connectivity across its estate of 52,000 properties and piloting LoRaWAN networks across the borough.

As Perry explained: ‘Along with the vision, I think there are three key aspects to consider when implementing a smart city. These are commercialisation, social value, and efficiencies.

‘If we can help local businesses to grow, then there are obvious social and economic benefit aspects to that. And making Southwark a place our residents can be proud of; that is of course an easy one for us.

‘A lot of people think smart cities is about saving money and driving down cost. But for us it is also about what, actually, can we do to generate income for the council, can we reinvest this in the service? What can we do in regards of utilising our assets better and what does that look like?’

Much like David Orchard, Perry emphasised the need to involve, engage with and bring residents, citizens and local businesses with you when implementing smart city initiatives. As well as the technology you needed to remember – or at the very least not forget about – the importance of social value, he highlighted.

CAREFUL BALANCING ACT

For example, when it came to sensors, there was a careful balancing act that a council needed to think through when it came to the business case/decision-making process, he explained.

‘Everyone is trying to sell you what they want to sell you and make some money out of it. But what can we use that is best in regards to efficiency, social value and commercialisation to help us as a council? And then location, where is it best to go? What is the most lucrative place for the commercialisation side of it and where are the areas of most concern or social value or interest?’ he said.

‘What do the residents want from it? What do businesses get out of it? How can we make it work for our stakeholders? Are there things we can do, socially, as a council to help our citizens?’ he highlighted. ‘It’s not just about saving time and money but, for us, also about improv

WATCH OUT FOR AUTUMN LDC EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES

As members will undoubtedly be aware by now, the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic has led to all ILP face-to-face events between now and July being either cancelled or postponed, including Professional Lighting Summit, which had been due to take place this month.

A programme of online CPD and social support activity is currently happening in its place but the hope – the intention – is that face-to-face CPD events will resume in the autumn, depending of course on the wider health situation.

To that end, please keep an eye on the Lighting Journal as well as online at www.theilp.org.uk/events

ing productivity,’ Perry added.

The final speaker for the afternoon was Dan Hodgson, lighting applications director at acdc, on ‘outdoor architectural lighting’, especially façade lighting, or, as he questioned: ‘When do you use it, why do you use it, what does it do to a space?’

Dan argued that, to be most effective, outdoor architectural lighting needed to be used ‘to define a space, to define the perimeter of a space; we use it to define history and culture within an urban environment; we use it to define the ground, the experience; we use architectural lighting on public buildings to establish that presence, to define it within its community.’

It always, again, needed to be about people, about people feeling safe within the environments they lived in, he emphasised. ‘It is about linking the interior to the outside. It is about people, it is about presence, about experience, about how it redefines their experience and their cultural heritage. And we use architectural lighting, whether it is on historic buildings or retail façades. We use architectural lighting to reveal the character of a building; to define the scale of the architecture.’

Jess Gallacher is the ILP’s Engagement and Communications Manager