“They are very useful in areas like the Old Town (of Bucharest i.e.), the seaside resorts etc., where Internet connection is needed,” said Bogdan Balaci, general manager of Philips Lighting South-Eastern Europe.
The investment could be made by the telecommunications operator, by city halls or by the operator of the street lighting system. The project is in line with the current trends that entail integration of lighting systems with IT and telecommunications networks, Balaci says.
“There is this concept of sharing infrastructure now. For instance, traffic lights, cameras and routers are installed on lighting poles. Under the circumstances, why shouldn’t they all be integrated? The lighting pole can become a computer, with all the elements integrated into a dashboard where all the street lighting fixtures in a city can be superimposed on the surveillance camera map,” Balaci added.
One of the advantages of such a technology is that in case cameras pick up some activity in an area, street light intensity could be turned up.
Philips Lighting devised a ‘smart city’ project in Campina in Romania, which enables control of the street lighting, but is not integrated with other systems yet.
Cisco, too, is in talks with city halls in Romania to implement smart street lighting solutions, combined with telecom technologies.
The key technologies that might be implemented in Romania soon are the smart city appplications, especially smart lighting solutions, Peter Hajdu, managing director Cisco South East Europe told ZF a little while ago.
Cisco advises cities to not just replace the light bulbs when switching to LED lighting solutions but also implement a Wi-Fi antenna infrastructure that should become the platform for creating smart cities. That is because city halls can start developing various applications based on that infrastructure, he added.
Soon smart street lighting solutions will be possible to implement that adjust to the changes in natural light and traffic level and can be integrated with software programs used by other types of public services (high-speed Internet, traffic management), giving city halls digital public service management platforms.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)