Smart street lights controlled through internet placed around city

Jamshedpur is one of the first to use Tata Communications’ LoRa network for smart city services such as smart metering and lighting. Besides doing Proofs of Concept (PoCs) for smart street lighting—in which lights can automatically adjust their brightness based on factors such as the available natural light or density of traffic.

The establishment of a LoRa LPWAN (low power wide area network ) base station with gateways to manage city services will embed in the Jamshedpur of tomorrow, devices, electronics, sensors, software and connectivity. This will be lead to even greater efficiency in the use of all resources.

JUSCO, a Tata Steel subsidiary that look after civic amenities in the city, is working on several initiatives to make life smarter for the people. Smart Parking solution is one of the most ambitious projects, which aims to solve parking issues. The company is working on project to deploy of parking sensors at major parking areas.

“With the implementation of the project people can know the parking slot availability all the time using the dashboard. It will reduce time to search vacant slot. It will also reduce in full time employment deployments permanently at the parking areas and will also help in efficient space utilisation,” said an official of Jusco.

JUSCO has rolled out smart street lights in the city that can be controlled and operated through internet. The system has smart features such as switching the lights on/off or dimming them remotely from a central command centre. The lights can be adjusted in clusters depending on need in each location, which helps reduce manpower costs and energy consumption further.

"IoT is the most revolutionary technology that is designed to pave for better living standards. Not only does it help us reduce our carbon footprint, but it also sets significant cost savings, because of its extremely low power consumption, said Gaurav Anand, chief manager, environment and sustainability, JUSCO.

Among the initiatives being rolled out are Smart Water Level Monitoring, Digital Dustbins, sensor based Street Lighting, Smart Parking and Proactive management of the Sewage Network.

Workforce tracking system is another path breaking project which will pave way for real time location and tracking of workers through smart wearable devices. Through data analytics it will lead to better planning and efficient resource utilisation. It is being designed to improve workforce efficiency

For instance, JUSCO is also installing sensors under the manholes in the city so that the water level can be monitored and preventive action taken before water actually gushes out of the sewers onto city streets. The monitoring is done from a centralised command and control (C&C) centre that is manned jointly by JUSCO and Tata Communications personnel.