The Benefits of Small Communities as Testbeds For Smart Cities
Smart communities around the world continue to develop on strong technological foundations, which aim to simplify the lives of their citizens and bring them into a new era of urban living. The toughest challenges in smart urban planning usually reside in long-term inefficient strategies, budget constraints or technologies facing implementation issues. But what if you could actually test these technologies, real-time, in day-to-day living?
A small county in Virginia has become the latest testbed for emerging technologies in real-world settings, as a result of a partnership between the county and the Center for Innovative Technology. The Virginia Smart Community Testbed in Stafford County is a project that began in 2019, as a plan to build a smart community in Stafford and which will explore Internet of Things deployment using 5G communications, along with other technologies.
The testbed is a “shared knowledge platform” to develop practical and relevant smart technologies solutions and for the long run, it will foster the growth of smart communities in Virginia. The tech tested through this project will aim to improve public security, data security & training, economic development & tourism, and 5G technology & broadband expansion. It is the latest step for a state that is already a tech leader in areas like unmanned aerial systems.
As Governor Ralph Northam puts it, "innovation is the key to creating new jobs, driving economic growth, and tackling our biggest challenges". However, it is also important to keep in mind that the type of tech used for smart communities evolves at an incredible pace. And over time, issues will arise with the lack of update and maintenance, as well as unmatching infrastructures that create challenges for fresh tech to be implemented. But a testbed like the one in Stafford can help foresee what sort of needs we must adapt to.
Over the past decade and a half, while managing urban projects for the city of Alba Iulia, Romania, I’ve had the chance to apply similar steps and implement them into our city strategy, putting technology to use in order to produce value for entire communities. From the internet services in public spaces, beacons, apps for signaling incidents, to non-stop medical care centres, or digitising schoolrooms and air monitoring. Tech developments are great, but when you make them part of a greater mission, they’re truly amazing.
Another similar project worthy of note is the testbed at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. This is the home of the Aerial Experimentation and Research Platform for Advanced Wireless, an initiative that focuses on applications for high-speed wireless communications serving areas like disaster and emergency response, logistics and transportation for unmanned aircraft and autonomous vehicles.
These projects are not just there to be referenced as models in the application of technology and smart infrastructures and how these contribute to a more efficiently intertwined model of building a smart city strategy, but are a hugely efficient and beneficial way for smaller and growing communities to attract much needed public and private investment, create jobs and improve the quality of life of their citizens at large. Something which, once again, I’ve already seen transform Alba Iulia into a prime example of forward-thinking European living.
