Bike sharing and smart parking: how smart cities are created

Smart environment

2 billion tons of municipal solid waste are produced annually, which

accumulate in nature and pose a threatfor good health. In Russia, only 5–10% of waste is recycled, while in Western countries - up to 70%. Waste separation systems, as well as solving the transportation issue, can correct the situation. It is 65% of the disposal cost, so it creates additional costs.

Finnish company Enevo uses IoT technologyto provide analytical data on waste generation and disposal. The Amsterdam administration, Westdale and Peet’s Coffee cooperate with her. With Enevo, seven McDonald's UK locations have cut costs by 12% and cut waste. The use of smart technology has provided cost efficiency and helped make life easier for a busy restaurant team by automating inspection processes. The company was able to track recycling metrics more closely and understand what happens to their waste when it leaves restaurants.

South Korean company Ecube Labs alsoproposed its solution for waste management, designed to improve the efficiency of waste collection by at least 50%. The technology is being applied at Dublin Airport, Baltimore, Melbourne and other cities (in collaboration with the city government). In South Korea, Ecube Labs has implemented its solution on university campuses in Seoul. A total of 144 CleanCUBE bins have replaced over 400 traditional bins. This has reduced the university's waste collection costs by 86%, and the public spaces are cleaner than ever. Waste collectors find it convenient to use the monitoring system and this allows them to provide better services much more efficiently.

In Russia, the problem of garbage began to pay attention andat the legislative level, launching in January 2019 a reform aimed at creating a waste recycling infrastructure. In addition, there are many wastetech startups in Russia with excellent solutions. For example, SmartCity Bin - smart bins with a waste compaction system, reducing waste volume up to 6-8 times. The system is equipped with sensors that monitor the filling of the urn, atmospheric pressure and outside temperature. It works autonomously, from solar panels. SmartCity Bin cuts waste collection costs by 70%.

Eco-friendly public transport

The increase in the number of cars on the road anda corresponding increase in congestion worsens the environmental situation due to increased emissions. The introduction of electric motors, as well as the sharing of electric scooters and bicycles, which is actively developing in the West and relieves the traffic flow, can help in this situation.

The Chinese company Mobike was the first in the world tooffering a bike sharing service for short city trips. You can take a bike at any time, leave it in any place acceptable for parking - it is not tied to a specific station. The development is successfully used by the administrations of Zaragoza, London, Hanover and other government organizations. Today the company operates in 23 European cities. For example, in Zaragoza, Spain, thanks to Mobike, the city will work on road safety measures and bicycle parking services in collaboration with the city council. Biksharing should reduce traffic congestion and increase urban mobility, making bicycles as convenient and popular as cars.

Many Western companies have taken the example of Mobike: France's Smoove has implemented IoT and offers electric bicycles all over the world, but it still requires transport back to the station. In Russia, the first city rental network appeared in Moscow in 2013 from CityBike, a subsidiary of VTB. Moreover, the equipment was supplied by Smoove. Since 2016, in addition to ordinary bicycles, there are electric bicycles in the network (over 400), and since 2019 VeloBike has gone beyond the Moscow Ring Road. Every year, the interest of Muscovites in bike rental is growing: in 2019, more than 4.4 million trips were made via VeloBike: an increase of 15% compared to 2018.

Intelligent transportation system

Increase in the number of vehicles on the highwaysincreases the number of congestions, irrational use of road resources, increases travel time and fuel consumption. Updating road maps, assessing the current situation, optimizing routes are essential components of a smart city. According to Ivan Ozhgikhin, deputy general director of the Shvabe holding of the Rostec state corporation, an active stage of implementation of regional intelligent transport systems is beginning in Russia. One of the largest ITS in the world operates in Moscow - it is about 40 thousand traffic lights, more than 10 thousand equipment, which includes traffic sensors, television cameras, weather stations, as well as road information boards, communication systems and server equipment.

“A comfortable life in the city is, first of all,high transport accessibility when the travel time from home to work is predictable. An intelligent system regulates traffic flows, fights traffic jams and makes sure that public transport runs on schedule. It is also one of the most important factors in improving road safety, ”says Ivan Ozhgikhin.

The Israeli company Valerann has developeda wireless sensor-based smart IoT road system that provides real-time information about everything that happens on the roads. Tel Aviv's Ayalon highway in the direction of the Rokach Boulevard exit is testing smart road sensors to alert of danger. Motorists will be watched by smart carnations - sensors strategically located along the sides of the road to warn of hazards or disruptions in traffic.

In Rochester in 2016 to track trafficboth administrators and citizens presented the DoubleMap project: a program for iOS and Android, as well as a web application and mobile version for Blackberry and Windows. In real time, city residents see the movement of public transport, so as not to wait in vain for their bus at a stop. Administrative tools and reports for dispatchers (with travel time and route) help improve the efficiency of the city's transport system, manage routes, optimize costs and transport maintenance. Tracking is provided by GPS.

The system is able to estimate the time of arrival of transportto a certain point and notify about it in an SMS message. To do this, it is enough to send the stop ID to a short service number. At the moment, DoubleMap covers three continents and all US cities. The company has more than 1,500 clients, including Texas State University, LYNX, EAU Claire Transit.

For Russia, the very idea of ​​tracking publicTransport today is no longer a novelty: it has been offered since 2014 by the Yandex.Transport application, the functions of which have been performed by Yandex.Maps since June 2020 - they are used by 50 million people. However, the functionality here is lower than that of the listed Western counterparts. The townspeople see only the arrival time of the transport, they see where it is going, but there are no alerts. The system works only on smartphones: there is no web version.

Smart parking

Smart parking is another important part of SmartCity,helping to solve the problem of transport and environmental collapse. About 30% of traffic is cars wandering in search of parking. Muscovites and Petersburgers choose public transport to save their time. Almost 80% of car owners in Russia occasionally use taxi services, with 19% citing unwillingness to seek parking as key reasons. While in Russia they are just thinking how to solve the situation, in the West and in the countries of Asia they are already struggling with it.

Qucit provides administrationEuropean cities (primarily French) software that includes AI technologies and allows you to assess the state of parking spaces. The motorist in the application receives a calculation of the time to park, depending on the distance. If it is far from the surface parking, the system will suggest an underground one. Also in Amsterdam, Qucit is offering its predictive technology on behalf of Egis, which manages 150,000 parking spaces in the city and provides payment. The service predicts where to find drivers who have not paid for their place, thereby maximizing the level of payment, as well as increasing the turnover of parking spaces.

China's AI Park One uses AI toopen and garage parking management, so that drivers can pre-book a place. The company also offers robots for automatic parking, smart navigation. The system has already covered 2,000 parking lots in Chinese cities. In Russia, Ford has offered to reduce the time it takes to find a parking space for its car owners and to simplify the payment process using the ParkApp Pay app. Artificial intelligence predicts user behavior and demonstrates not only empty spaces, but also those that will soon be available.

Digitalization of cities will continue to intensify,because it not only shows economic efficiency, but has demonstrated its value throughout the world in a pandemic. “Countries in which GovTech is at a high level adapted to new conditions faster, allowed citizens to perform most of the procedures online,” says Viktor Yakovlev, vice president of Gazprombank and head of the digital technologies department. He notes that Russia has not yet become a leader in this area, but we have large IT players (Yandex, Kaspersky Lab and others) who are capable of creating equally powerful products.

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