The population concentration in Sri Lankan cities has accelerated in recent years. A recent report revealed that cities such as Anuradhapura, Badulla, Colombo, Galle, and Jaffna have expanded greatly since the 1990s.
Naturally, along with this growing urbanisation comes the associated pain points like traffic congestion, pollution, growing public transportation needs, higher crime incidences and security risks. Public safety particularly has become a major concern for Sri Lankans since this year’s tragic Easter Day attacks.
In this regard, street furniture embedded with smart solutions have the potential to play a key role in enhancing residents’ quality of lives. Street furniture is a term used to define objects in public spaces that house small cell units and are considered commonplace to the public. Common examples of street furniture outfitted with small cell networks include billboards, lamp poles, bus stops, phone booths, park benches, utility poles and so on.
A key learning from the April 2019 tragedy is the importance of continued connectivity during times of crisis, when simple things usually taken for granted like being able to call our loved ones is temporarily taken away. The inclusion of small cells in urban city planning will allow seamless connectivity even when some infrastructure is damaged.
When embedded with smart technologies, street furniture has proven to reduce fatalities by up to 10%, lower crime incidents by as much as 40% and dramatically reduce emergency response times, which is critical in disaster management situations.
Smart surveillance can be an important tool to monitor suspicious behaviours, activities or gather pertinent intelligence as part of a nation’s effort to fight crime and counter extremism. Combined with smart sensors, a centrally connected network of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras installed across busy streets on various street furniture can provide law enforcement agencies with real-time footage, allowing them to detect threats efficiently and act as a deterrent for any public criminal minds like drug traffickers, burglars and thieves.
Although this might sound like science fiction, these smart solutions are now a reality in many cities around the world. For example, in Kenya, Nairobi’s authorities are equipped with panoramic video surveillance of the city’s urban centre, and a highly agile command and dispatch setup, running on satellite-based Global Position System (GPS) and software-based Geographic Information System (GIS). This enables its police force to locate potential crime hotspots precisely. Similar smart technologies are also extensively deployed in cities such as London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Islamabad, New York, and Kuala Lumpur to name a few.