More than just light

Streetlamps are essential part of every cityscape across the globe. Equipped with smart city technology, however, they offer much more than just to illuminate public spaces. Germany’s largest utilities provider Innogy integrates IoT technology and digital signage into its Smart Pole solutions – thus offering the streetlamp of the future.

People use smartphones around the clock. Easily accessible and secure WiFi plus digital services are seen as an indispensable necessity. Inhabitants, commuters, and tourists expect smart city solutions in today’s cities. To meet this demand, public space must change: sensors and intelligent touchpoints are the cornerstones of smart city concepts. But a city can hardly become intelligent with smartphones and a cloud infrastructure alone: it needs excellent cellular coverage, IoT sensor technology and other public, digital infrastructure. Sounds like cluttering public spaces with numerous electronics enclosures. Not if Innogy Smart Poles, a subsidiary of the utilities giant Eon, has its way. The latest generation of smart streetlamps offer much more than just illuminating streets. They offer a perfect platform for digitizing public space because they are indispensable, basically installed everywhere already socially accepted part of the cityscape.

Whether charging electric cars, monitoring traffic and parking space or measuring air quality – smart poles offer a wide range of smart city features. In addition, smart poles provide fast WiFi and digital signage displays can also be integrated.

For Innogy the integration of Digital Signage and DooH plays an important role for a smart city platform. Public displays are vital to visualize live data and data-based applications to the public. In addition, DooH advertising enables the public sector or operator of smart poles to generate ad-revenues. For cities transforming to smart cities, a smart pole infrastructure offers an attractive bundle of operational data and digital services for citizens.

The screens on the Smart Poles are 55 to 65 inches in diameter and are installed at a height of 2.5 meters with their lower edge. Integrated sensors provide data which can be displayed on the screens alternating with advertising. For example, camera sensors can detect available parking spaces and pass the information on to the surrounding Smart Poles, which in turn guides drivers to the free parking space. The Intelligent Parking Space Management can also be connected to sensors in the ground below the parking spaces to work even more precisely. With this data, municipality can also see analyze the utilization of public parking spaces. Extremely valuable data for urban planners. Moving traffic can also be tracked and analyzed, vehicles on the street as well as foot traffic on the sidewalks. Conventional videos or fast-moving content is off-limits for smart pole displays as well as roadside screen as they would distract moving traffic. However, cinemagraphic content or slowly animated GIFs are permitted.

Innogy Smart Poles developed a specific CMS platform enabling the public sector to manage the digital content of smart pole screens easily. Based on HTML5, images can be uploaded, texts can be placed and, if necessary, animations can be integrated. The city can also set up dedicated access for advertisers. A quality check is carried out by the CMS before the content is published. Playout can be managed by selecting smart poles on a map or with various filters. As a white label solution, Innogy also offers templates for weather forecasts or the parking graphics. This enables municipalities to manage the smart pole solution without support of an IT department or design agency.

For decades already operates Innogy more than a million standard streetlamps in Europe – in cities as well as in the countryside. This longtime experience flowed into the development of intelligent street lighting. So far, only a few lighthouse projects have been deployed, for example in Essen. Since the COVID19 shutdown in March, however, digitalization of public spaces is finally gaining momentum in many parts of Europe. The need for digital touch points and a public communication platform has never been more important.