Las Vegas Rethinks Smart City Plans in Light of Covid19

When we first visited Las Vegas in early 2020 it was buzzing with action. The annual Consumer Electronics Show had just taken over the Strip and a few miles away in the city's Innovation District city officials were studying the effects of sensors, smart lights and 5G enabled cameras. You're seeing all the cameras that are monitoring traffic and incidents throughout the city. It's a very exciting time. be in the field. But now, less than a year later, the city that was once the center for gambling, conventions, concerts. It's just stopped dead. The state of Nevada slashing and shifting millions of dollars from agency budgets as a result of COVID -19. All agencies are going to feel the result of some of the cuts that we're facing. I mean, do you invest in this smart infrastructure or do you fix potholes, put more crossing guards out there, add more police? And that's put Las Vegas's smart. city ambitions in jeopardy i'm gonna go on the record right now saying that you know i don't see a lot of smart city things scaling across the entire city las vegas had plans to become a smart city by 2025. many of its pilot projects began in 2016 in its innovation district partnerships with ntt dell cisco at &t and others powered a number of smart city pilots first let's take a look at the that began last summer with AT&T. We have roughly plans to do 300 lights in total. So right now we have, I want to say, probably about 75 or 100 in that range. So we'll expand it out. And by expanding the pilot, we get more opportunity to look at economies of scale. You know, a lot of claims are made by a lot of vendors, and I'm not going to say that they're not accurate, but a lot of times they're made in a vacuum. So they're not... made with weather in mind you know obviously it's hot here you know there's maintenance items that have to be done so you know in a perfect world you never if you know you never have to maintenance any of this stuff it's supposed to just work but we all know that in the real world there is maintenance so does that make you think twice about investing in smart city technology for example the smart lights can we expect that technology to be deployed citywide you know some have some have shown a lot of potential um and promise the streetlight one does show a lot of potential and promise. The difficulty is, is that we have a lot of lights. One of the things we've learned that makes now a bigger use case is that there's a lot of children throughout Southern Nevada that don't have access to the internet. So if we used our streetlights to use that as part of our network, is that a benefit to the community? The answer is yes. Now would the community be willing to pay for some of that? And is there the legal authority for us to be able to provide internet out to the public for free? However, some solutions have proven to be a payback almost instantly. Las Vegas has put forth restrictions on outdoor gatherings. These cameras provide updates on traffic flow. The ability to put cameras where you need them very quickly has become more critical. Where if we didn't have the infrastructure in the past, we couldn't do it. Now with 5G. if it's in the areas we're looking at, you know, installing a camera is a matter of just providing electricity to it. Other things that work, that seem to work well, is, you know, air quality sensors. That might be one that we, you know, be able to do citywide very rapidly, thanks to 5G and having the ability to get streaming data on a regular basis. And that data is very helpful. Obviously, we have a lot of smoke from California. So, you know, having some additional information. and being able to detect other anomalies before they become an issue in the community would be vital. The city has been testing the sensors by attaching them to Ubiquia's Ubicel Streetlight routers. This was done as a pilot with AT&T in 2019. AT &T also provides a cellular network for Las Vegas' smart irrigation solution, in which smart irrigation controllers connected to that network work in conjunction with flow management products and global positioning. technology. The solution tracks water usage and identifies leaks and breaks in the system. Before we were limited, you know, did the sprinkler turn on? Yes. The sprinkler says it's on. Did it turn off? Yes, it turned off. Now we're able to get information such as the flow of water. You know, very important when you live in the desert to understand, you know, how much water you're using. When cities have identified the outcomes that they're trying to achieve and the specific like down to the KPIs that they that they want to have by their by deploying smart cities technology then they're going to be more successful in scaling and planning for the long term and they push to drive even more efficiency las vegas has been testing lidar sensors since 2018 the city is working with quantity the same company behind the lidar technology in san francisco a city we previously explored using the technology to better understand traffic flow at busy intersections las vegas uses lidar in that way and it's also taken the solution a step further by using the solution to gather data in its parks. This was prior to the pandemic. What we wanted to be able to do is understand how many people are using our park. You know, we're investing a lot of money and we don't really have a good feel for how many people are there on a daily basis. The promise was that LIDAR eventually would be cheaper than video and less storage. We don't have to store all the video. We just store the LIDAR data, which is. much, if you think about it, much less. Even with a, you know, LTE network, you know, trying to use video for that kind, it just, and uploading it, just terrible. So while Las Vegas has pulled back on some plans regarding its smart city deployments, others with greater payback remain in full force, signaling that the pandemic may not lead to a slowdown in smart cities. I think there's a lot of debate, you know, what happens to smart cities going forward in the next couple. years. I think you'll see a lot of the cities that are doing smart cities continuing with that effort because there is savings at some point and there is an opportunity and efficiency gains over time. Be sure to stick with current insights for more coverage like this and hit the link below if you have questions or comments. Till next time, I'm Diana Blass.