What is a smart city?
A smart city is an urban area that employs technologies and strategies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics to gain insights, manage resources and optimize services efficiently. It’s a digital transformation for sustainable urban development and represents the future of city infrastructure.
Smart buildings have applied intelligent networking to optimize how their built environment operates for its occupants. Smart cities do the same—across a wider array of systems, people and networks.
By integrating information and communication technology (ICT) with sensors in devices such as LED lighting—connected to the IoT network—a city can leverage data and applications. It’s a smart solution to manage resources, enhance energy efficiency and performance, and reduce costs and resource consumption for a more sustainable approach to daily living.
Dalkia’s smart city solutions
Dalkia smart city solutions combine hardware, software and networking to improve city residents’ safety, communication, health and mobility. Incredible new technologies from Dalkia for smart cities are already available, with more under development.
Dalkia develops outcome-based financial and contractual models that help local governments digitize their urban infrastructure operations, generate new revenue streams and reduce their cost of delivery of city services. New, IoT based connected services can offering a city greater options for enhanced quality of life. For example, when paired with gunshot detection software, smart lighting could illuminate the crime scene while the detection system alerts authorities.
By blending people, technology and data into a smart city wide application, Dalkia can provide enhanced value to America’s vibrant and diverse communities.
Smart lighting for smart cities
Smart lighting technologies are one effective step on a smart city roadmap. Existing city street lighting systems can be updated with newer LED based lighting which boosts energy savings, reduces energy consumption and provides intelligent network control.
Integrated IoT sensors enable the distributed LED lighting systems to respond to local environments and human activity, providing adapted lighting levels while collecting data for valuable insights into usage and demands. Remote lighting management optimizes the network for energy efficiency and generates significant energy savings.
Renovating and rethinking lighting is not just about reducing energy bills—it’s also about making urban lighting a source of comfort, safety and enhancement of the space. We work across the entire value chain to make city or neighborhood lighting more efficient and better valued.
Case Study: City of Albuquerque, NM
Learn more about Dalkia’s 15 year agreement as a partner to provide smart city services to the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico through this case study and video.
Dalkia and its EDF affliates deliver smart city solutions in the communities where they operate around the world:
Dalkia, EDF Group
Dalkia originally invented the thermal smart grid as a solution for cities and towns in France. An intelligent heating network, the grid distributes heat energy to city residents, while collecting and using real-time monitoring to respond quickly to meet rising and falling demands for more reliable, cost-effective energy management. These energy smart grids allow cities to provide heat energy to the grid’s users in a more intelligent and efficient fashion.
Citelum, EDF Group
By adapting services such as lighting master plans to a city’s specific needs and budgets, Citelum helps communities around the world to enhance their illumination systems, provide visual appeal along with an embedded public safety infrastructure. Citelum has partnered with cities such as Dijon, France; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Syracuse, Sicily.
EDF France
EDF France plans for a CO2 neutral energy future with innovative smart city solutions including smart lighting, renewable energy options, waste recovery, electrical charging and beyond.
EDF France also developed the EDF City Platform, a three-dimensional urban planning tool that leverages EDF’s integrated city solutions across sectors like energy, transport and water management. City planners can use the tool to achieve their key indicator goals on issues like GHG emissions, energy, quality of life and cost.
EDF Energy UK
The Research and Development team at EDF Energy UK is helping Britain achieve net zero carbon emissions. As the largest producer of low-carbon electricity in the UK, EDF Energy is helping leaders around the world envision how technology and data can be leveraged to make their cities more sustainable, resilient and livable.
EDF Energy UK is advancing research in the fields of low carbon generation, modeling and simulation, environment and natural hazards, energy system design, smart cities, local energy systems, energy storage and efficiency, and smart digital technology.
