Next Generation of Citizen Services on Display at the Smart City Expo World Congress
As the US heads into Thanksgiving, and the rest of the world begins to scope Black Friday deals, I’m settling back in after last week’s Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. The event hosted over 18,000 attendees that got to browse the latest in smart city technology from vendors and cities that have deployed these solutions.
AvePoint was proud to join the Microsoft Pavilion and showcase our solutions along with the other Microsoft partners focused on making cities more sustainable, safe, and digital.
I had the privilege of speaking to city officials, federal government officials, and partners all focused on enabling truly citizen-centric services.
Enabling Citizen-Centric Services
AvePoint worked with Microsoft and several other partners to show attendees the potential of citizen centric services.
Microsoft’s Connected Vehicle demonstration illustrated how partner solutions and Microsoft Aware can work together to deliver a citizen-centric response to a car crash.
In the demo, a car crashes into a streetlight. This sets off the car airbags, and knock the streetlight over.
Sensors in the car airbag, streetlight, and from other IOT-enabled devices immediately start sending notifications and data to relevant city services departments.
This data may trigger a response from emergency services such as an ambulance to monitor the health of the citizen or police officers to direct traffic and assess for any criminal activity.
It could also trigger non-emergency services to repair damaged property such as the street light.
Drones may be deployed to gather a full spectrum of data on the accident site, and help inform emergency and repair services along the way! In this way, cities can deploy resources to support and aid the citizen, whether that’s ultimately delivered by one department, or many.
AvePoint Citizen Services Leaps Into Action
AvePoint Citizen Services played a key role in this demonstration. The latest version of our platform, which we debuted at this year’s Microsoft Inspire Conference, takes advantage of Azure’s IOT integration and machine learning capabilities.
Our streetlight IOT integration kicked off a service request as soon as the light went out, which a dispatcher then assigned to the appropriate field teams.
Citizen Services directed the field team to the correct location, and sent notifications once the repair was marked complete. Machine learning helps with ongoing streetlight maintenance, as an example, providing warnings when lights may go out in the near future, so cities can optimize field resources.
The Future of Citizen-Centric Services
While streetlights were the example used last week – the same could apply for a number of scenarios! Monitoring sewer systems or water mains for overflow, transit facilities for damage, or even the sensors that are being used in next-generation vehicles!
With this deeper integration into the Azure cloud, Citizen Services is going beyond improving citizen engagement with easy-to-use portals and request interfacing, we’re helping cities be more proactive – to resolve issues before they exist!
Stay tuned in the coming weeks, when we’ll be sharing more videos and content, showcasing AvePoint Citizen Services!
AvePoint Citizen Services is available now, in AppSource, so you can try it to take the first step towards a smarter city with more engaged citizens!
