As “smart city” technology becomes increasingly prevalent in early-adopter cities such as Las Vegas, ensuring it has a practical use in everyday life is key as officials evaluate pitches from developers.
A smart city is an urban area that uses various technology — sensors, cameras and other means — to gather data to manage assets and resources more efficiently. The city of Las Vegas has become a hub for companies testing new technologies, the most recent being Navya’s driverless shuttle downtown.
Weeding through the influx of offers is one of the main challenges of becoming a smart city, said Jorge Cervantes, chief operations and development officer for Las Vegas.
“For some of the stuff we’ve done, we’ve gotten recognition throughout the world, so we get all sorts of vendors coming (at us) with the next great solution,” Cervantes said at a smart city community forum Monday at City Hall. “That’s fine, but from our perspective we want to identify a problem before we identify a solution.”
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Working with a solution without a problem to solve can create extra work and lead to a result that the city can't use in its everyday operations, forum participants said.
“Focusing on needs rather than wants is very important in the public process,” said Jeff Tumlin, principal and director of strategy for Nelson/Nygaard Consulting, which develops transportation systems. “When I’m writing public processes, I focus on outcome, and particularly, needs. Don’t tell me you want endless highways or endless ice cream … or no new taxes.
“Tell me what you need and let’s work together to figure out how to allocate our limited resources to best achieve those needs.”
Even if a city uses a new solution to a problem, sometimes the city outgrows its use, or finds that it’s not leading to the results it was seeking, Tumlin said.
Despite the urge to unveil the technology first, being patient while deciding which to implement is important, said Kate Garman, Seattle Smart City coordinator.
“It is not worth getting the headline of this great city project if it’s not specific to our city, or if it’s not well-thought out it could have some repercussions later,” Garman said. “Smart cities have a lot of pressure to get that announcement … Don’t worry if it takes time. You’re probably doing yourself a better service.”
Garman recommends communicating with residents and studying long-term impacts before launching a new initiative.
Smart technologies to improve public safety have been tested in Las Vegas. Cameras are recording areas with a high concentration of homeless to conduct daily counts. Cameras are also being used to monitor parks after hours.
“These cameras also have an infrared capacity. The parks close at 11 o’clock at night and if somebody is there at 2 o’clock in the morning, they’re probably doing something they shouldn’t be doing,” Cervantes said. “These cameras can detect that and do an automatic message saying, ‘Park closed at 11 and marshals are on their way.’ They can also send an alert to the marshals saying there is activity going in this park that shouldn’t be.”
Aside from camera use, sensors are being used to increase pedestrian safety.
The sensors are counting bicyclists in the downtown area to see if a bike-related initiative, like the green bike lanes, is worth the investment. Sensors are also being placed near midblock crosswalks in which motorists have almost hit pedestrians.
“So we are getting these analytics of where are these near-misses, what’s creating these near-misses and how do we address that with a safety perspective,” Cervantes said.