What to do with a citywide digital network ...

Kitchener considers using technology to monitor parking, noise levels and water use

KITCHENER — The network of more than 16,000 smart sensors is installed, and up and running. Now city officials will begin exploring how they can use the digital web that spans the city.

Last year, when the three cities and Waterloo Region were replacing all street lights with more-energy efficient ones, Kitchener decided to spend an extra $2 million to install smart sensors in each light. That essentially created a wireless narrow-band network the city can tap into for a host of applications.

All the sensors are in place, and staff are beginning to try out the software to be able to program individual lights, Dan Murray, Kitchener’s director of tech innovation, told councillors this week.

In 2018 the city will begin experimenting with how it can start to use this wireless network in a number of other ways, beyond dimming street lights.

“We’ve got a lot of ideas of where we’re going to go with this, but we want to pilot things and test them out,” Murray said. “A lot of them hold significant promise.”

This year, the city will likely begin looking at what smart meters work best to remotely transmit gas and water use from homes to a central location.

While there’s a small savings in not having to send someone out to read a meter, “the real benefit is that by having the data of what people are using on a daily basis, we can help people with consumption,” Murray said.

For example, it can be used to quickly spot a sudden spike from a leak.

Once the city has figured out which

meters best suit its needs, it will begin replacing meters as they age with new ones that can feed data into the wireless network.

Second, the city will figure out how it could use the smart network to track where parking spaces are available on downtown streets, in city lots and parking garages.

“You can actually direct people to where parking is available,” Murray said.

The technology allows the city to “get as much out of our parking assets, and make it easier for people to use them.”

Making efficient use of current parking could delay the need to build a sixth parking garage at a cost of $12 million or more.

The third application explored this year will be to use the network to provide real-time, continuous monitoring of noise levels, information that could be helpful for bylaw enforcement, for urban planning near the airport, and so on.

Murray was outlining the city’s plans this year for Digital Kitchener, the strategy to guide city investments in technology until 2021.

The strategy looks not only at the technology needs of city hall, but how technology investments by city hall can improve life for residents.

“This is the stuff that just excites me,” said Coun. Bil Ioannidis. “This is what the future is.”

“This is the real path forward for municipalities to provide the highest level of service at the lowest possible cost,” said Coun. Scott Davey.

“I think an investment in the near term can very well pay off in terms of cost savings in the long term.”

Once staff determine the best practical applications for the new smart network, they’ll provide a detailed report and budget for council, Murray said.

The Digital Kitchener strategy includes a number of other initiatives this year:

• a regional bid in the federal government’s Smart Cities Challenge, which will award a single city or region $50 million to come up with innovative tech solutions to improve residents’ lives;

• a partnership, through the Region of Waterloo, with SWIFT, which aims to bring an ultrahigh-speed fibre optic network across southwestern Ontario. That effort will take years, possibly decades, to unfold, Murray said, but it aims to improve connectivity for areas — including in parts of Kitchener — where internet infrastructure is antiquated or unreliable;

• improving access to public WiFi and computers, and determining what public spaces, such as parks, might make sense to expand WiFi to;

• working with local tech companies involved in the so-called Internet of Things to help them develop technologies that could benefit municipalities, and which they could then market to other cities.