Rapidly increasing populations in metro areas worldwide have led to new and urgent challenges, such as increasing road traffic, higher incidences of traffic-related fatalities, and heightened security concerns in crowded public venues. These challenges have underscored the need to implement smart city technologies.
Smart city technologies put data into city leaders’ hands, to enable better decisions that improve the safety and efficiency of a city. In the early years, when smart cities were a concept more than a reality, city leaders and planners saw “behind-the-scenes” efficiency as the primary benefit of smart cities (McKinsey).
Today, however, it is clear the true power of the smart city lies in its ability to provide citizens with a better quality of life. From creating safer roads for vehicles and pedestrians alike, to making it easier, faster, and safer for people to move about their daily lives, whether they are at the grocery store or the airport.
What is LiDAR for smart cities?
LiDAR is a key technology driving smart cities forward. LiDAR-based smart city solutions accurately, anonymously, and discretely capture powerful data about the movement of people and vehicles across large areas to create safe, efficient, and effective smart cities.
LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. An extremely versatile sensing technology, LiDAR fires a low-power, eye-safe pulsing laser and measures the time it takes for the laser to complete a round trip between the LiDAR and its target (called “time of flight”). The aggregate data is used to generate a 3D point cloud image, providing both spatial location and depth information that can be used to identify, classify, and track moving objects.
A key concern for the smart city is privacy. Many citizens worry about protecting their personal data and are often wary of surveillance measures, especially when these measures are used for purposes other than security. Unlike cameras and other traditional data-capture methods, LiDAR sensors collect no personally identifying information (PII), protecting the privacy and anonymity of citizens as they go about their daily lives. Thanks to their long range and broad coverage, LiDAR sensors can also be mounted discretely, allowing for unobtrusive monitoring. This enables cities and commercial building planners to bring efficiency and safety to their citizens and residents, while protecting privacy and optimizing necessary security resources.
In addition to privacy, another concern for smart cities is accuracy. Smart cities depend on accurate, reliable data to help leaders make the large-scale decisions that can affect millions of city residents. LiDAR sensors can provide greater than 98% accuracy; they also operate reliably in both indoor or outdoor applications, in very bright or extremely dark areas, and in virtually any weather condition. This ensures accurate data capture at all times and across all locations throughout the city.
How LiDAR is transforming cities worldwide into smart cities: key applications
LiDAR sensors are such a versatile technology that their use in smart cities is limited only by a user’s imagination. Anywhere that you need anonymized data about people or vehicle movement, LiDAR is a cost-effective, low-maintenance solution that provides reliable, accurate data to drive your most critical city infrastructure decisions. While the possibilities are endless, below are several of the most common applications of LiDAR in smart cities:
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Improve traffic flow and safety
By accurately and anonymously capturing individual and vehicle movements within dense crowds and across large areas, LiDAR technologies provide municipalities and government organizations with powerful data about intersections, roundabouts, roads, highways, parking lots, and toll gates. The rich object data generated by LiDAR-based smart city solutions can be used to automate critical processes that increase road safety, reduce pollution by lowering the number of idling vehicles, and reduce commute time by improving traffic flow. -
Protect pedestrian safety
According to the Smart City Hub, there is a global pedestrian safety crisis that has been getting worse, as traffic has become more congested in cities worldwide. LiDAR sensors gather real-time data that includes patterns in vehicle traffic, vehicle speeds, pedestrian numbers, and more. This increased situational awareness helps city officials develop more effective traffic policies and decide on the best technology to keep both pedestrians and drivers safe. -
Improve security in crowded public spaces
Within smart cities, LiDAR-based security solutions accurately detect, track, and classify intruders. Many LiDAR sensors can easily integrate with a VMS and its PTZ camera to precisely pinpoint threats and optimize security resources for perimeter protection, access control, and surveillance applications. -
Eliminate PII risk and protect citizen privacy
LIDAR enables all of the above smart city applications while protecting the privacy of citizens going about their daily lives. Unlike cameras, LIDAR does not capture or store any personally identifying information (PII). -
Enforce social distancing and occupancy limits
In the age of COVID-19, LiDAR is being used for innovative applications driven by the need to reduce the risk of virus transmission, especially in poorly ventilated indoor areas. LiDAR enables extremely accurate people counting and queue management that allows business to accurately monitor and enforce social distancing and occupancy limit regulations, while maintaining an efficient flow of people through the space. -
Improve customer experiences
LiDAR can also be used to automate and improve the effectiveness of key business processes. For example, data from LiDAR sensors can help business owners visualize people’s movements throughout a store and better understand customer behavior and preferences. This data can be used to optimize store layouts to increase revenue and conversion rate, regulate foot traffic, reduce wait times, and optimize resources for cleaning or customer service.
Conclusion
LiDAR-based smart city solutions are making cities safer and more efficient every day - from the school zone walkway to the airport runway. From San Francisco, California to Seoul, South Korea, major cities around the world have already implemented smart city solutions, and adoption of these technologies is increasingly rapidly, improving the quality of life for citizens worldwide.
