“Are the kids getting home safely today?”
If this question were presented to mayors and city leaders around the world, you would hope it would elicit an immediate “Yes.” However, we all know that the safety of a given neighborhood, borough or city is nuanced and often influenced by a multitude of factors that can feel beyond our control. With grandiose discussions about how AI and “smart cities” can transform urban living, city leaders can feel misunderstood when it comes to the real, everyday challenges their citizens face and the roadblocks that keep their city stagnant.
Therefore, when it comes to embracing AI-powered technology and infrastructures, cities would be wise to break down their challenges into granular levels. For example, traffic safety.
Driving incidents happen all around cities due to higher traffic volume, complex roads and the presence of pedestrians and cyclists. In Susono City, located in eastern Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, city leaders are familiar with these incidents, which is why in 2022, when they were approached about conducting a project that would evaluate the impact of smart streetlights on driver behavior, they embraced the opportunity.
Welcome to Susono City: Demographics, geography and challenges
Susono City, with a population of almost 50,000 citizens, is an industrial town surrounded by nature. To the east is the outer rim of Hakone, and to the west is the Aitaka mountain range.
Located at the foot of Mount Fuji, Susono City’s winter has the potential to bring icy roads due to low temperatures. On top of what can be difficult terrain, many of Susono City’s drivers are elderly and drive on roads with a high population of children coming to and from school each day on foot. Often, there is a shortage of government and transportation personnel monitoring these roads to ensure safety.
Due to Susono City’s unique challenges and its willingness to test out the impact of smart city technology, it became the perfect place to evaluate whether smart streetlights could positively impact traffic behavior.
“The goal was not only to digitize individual streetlights, but to create a vision in which streetlights—distributed across road infrastructure—can be utilized for a variety of purposes as part of a smart city infrastructure,” said Shunsuke Sakakura, Director, Smart City Taskforce, Smart World Business department, Business Solution Division, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc.
Parties involved knew that if this project were a success, it could be a win for implementing smart infrastructure on a broader level, beyond just traffic safety.
What are smart streetlights?
Smart streetlights are a type of streetlight equipped with functions such as sensors, cameras, network connectivity and cloud integration. It is a form of smart infrastructure that introduces real-time monitoring capabilities of pedestrians, cyclists and cars.
Features of smart streetlights
Smart streetlights have a number of features that make them unique. They may include the following:
- LED Lamps: LED lamps save electricity, energy, last longer and require minimal upkeep.
- 5G mobile network: 5G network connectivity allows for high-speed connections among multiple smart streetlights and can support the large data capacity required for real-time video monitoring.
- AI cameras: Edge AI cameras enable real-time detection and tracking of vehicles and people, allowing for effective traffic monitoring.
- Environmental sensors: Environmental sensors collect data such as sound levels, illuminance, temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure and gyroscopic movement – supporting the monitoring of urban environments.
- Road surface projectors: Image projectors in smart streetlights project images onto the pavement with safety signals like “slow down” or “icy road.”
Benefits of smart streetlights
Smart street lights have the potential to improve the quality of urban neighborhoods as well as efforts to become a more sustainable city. Here are a few of its most notable benefits:
- Road safety improvements: Smart streetlights can detect danger like slick conditions or a fallen object and alert drivers, reducing the potential for traffic accidents.
- Decrease traffic congestion: Smart streetlights support smooth driving by analyzing traffic patterns with sensors and data analytics. With this information, city leaders can make more informed decisions about traffic flow.
- Operation and maintenance cost reduction: Smart streetlights can be monitored online for malfunctions and deterioration, enabling efficient repair and replacement.
- Energy savings and CO2 reduction: Smart streetlights can support a city’s sustainability goals by savingenergy and reducing CO2 with LED lightbulbs.
Using smart streetlights to address Susono City’s challenges
Executing what was deemed the “Smart Streetlight Project” required help from various parties and stakeholders. It started in 2020 as a joint project between telecommunications company NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc., lighting specialist Stanley Electric, and electronic device provider Kaga FEI to digitize individual streetlights. In 2021, it turned into a larger project where Dassault Systèmes was brought on as a necessary additional partner.
“We supported the project in three main ways. First, by introducing Susono City as a potential partner. Second, by connecting the team to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ project framework. And third – most importantly – by providing modeling and visualization technologies to help bring clarity to the concept,” Kazuhisa Kumano, Public Services Business Development Director, Dassault Systèmes Japan.
Phase 1: Determining high-risk traffic areas
During the initial phase of the Smart Streetlight Project, the city of Susono provided the team with a list of locations where there was a high risk of driving incidents. One area in particular caught their interest – a public road in front of an elementary school and children’s center, where many children regularly pass through on foot. Due to the sense of urgency within the community to improve safety there, it was selected as an ideal location to validate the advancement of traffic safety measures using smart streetlights.
Phase 2: Designing smart street lights model using CATIA and visualizing data with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform
While 3D models of old existing utility poles were created using CATIA’s powerful computer-aided design (CAD) capabilities, the team utilized 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud for its virtual twin technology. They were able to create a virtual twin of the area surrounding the elementary school and children’s center and simulate what the smart streetlights would look like once installed. Using NETVIBES technology, users were able to collect data like the number of vehicles passing in a certain time, the number of vehicles exceeding the speed limit, and then visualize it on a 3D model using a GEOVIA application. Seeing what kind of data could be visualized and interpreted by the virtual twin made it easy for city leaders to imagine how they could leverage a visualization platform for a broader smart infrastructure concept in the future.
Phase 3: Execution of a year-long project
In 2023, the team was selected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for their “Regional Digital Infrastructure Utilization Promotion Project” to participate in a year-long demonstration at their chosen area of Susono City. Using the smart street lights, AI-powered alerts were issued to driving vehicles via digital signage and road projections. “The use of local 5G proved beneficial, as it allowed for low-latency connections among multiple streetlights and supported the large data capacity required for stable real-time video monitoring,” Koichiro Sakata, Manager, Business Design, Fifth Business Solutions, Business Solution Division, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc.
Initial insights made from the Smart Streetlight Project
The results from the Smart Streetlight Project proved to be positive. The results of the field experiments (or the proof of concept) found that among vehicles that exceeded the legal speed limit, the high speed range of 61km/h or more was indexed, and the reduction rate was about 58%. While we fell slightly short of the target, it does confirm a sufficient level of effectiveness. Additionally, the survey showed that 73% of respondents agreed that “displaying road surface drawings using AI detection leads to slower driving than constant projection,” confirming a high level of acceptability.
Dassault Systèmes successfully demonstrated to government officials how a visualization platform like the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud could be used by those who manage road infrastructure to improve safety outcomes. The project confirmed that it is possible to create a 3D city model that intuitively showcases the placement of streetlights in a virtual space, along with additional data captured by edge cameras and environmental sensors.
“We believe that 3D visualization and simulation technologies will be key to future innovation across all of our business domains, including telecommunications infrastructure, smart cities, healthcare, education, robotics, energy, and security,” said Shunsuke Sakakura, Director, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc. Local government officials noted how user-friendly the interface was, and overall, it was well-received.
“At the project debriefing session, local government officials who saw the platform were quite surprised. They were able to see the actual location reproduced in 3D and intuitively view collected data through a user-friendly interface. It really made us feel like this is a tool we’d like to utilize in many more applications moving forward,” Koichiro Sakata, Manager, Business Design, Fifth Business Solutions, Business Solution Division, NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc.
The Smart Street Light project also led to the development of future potential use cases for smart street lights. Dassault Systèmes collaborated with the Kyoto Women’s University, where various use cases were presented through workshops and other events, and new ideas were shared about how to use smart streetlights in the future, such as suspicious person detection and real-time disaster monitoring.
The future of smart streetlights and infrastructure
When it comes to the implementation of smart city infrastructure to improve urban living, there is not one straightforward approach. Through this project, it became clear that enhancing regional traffic safety involves the cooperation and enthusiasm of numerous stakeholders and local governments are often faced with tight budget constraints.
That being said, projects like the Smart Streetlight Project, which seek to solve regional issues on a granular level, can be incredibly powerful in not only showcasing how small digital changes can transform safety outcomes but also how smart infrastructure and platforms like the 3DEXPERIENCE platform have the potential to assist in solving multiple issues beyond traffic safety, like crime prevention and weather disasters, to improve the lives of residents.
NTT DOCOMO BUSINESS, Inc., and Stanley Electric has high hopes about continuing working together with Dassault Systèmes in the future to bring their vision to life. “Moving forward, through continued collaboration, we aim to further scale our efforts toward building safer, more secure and sustainable cities,” Kazunori Hirose, Applied Technology Section, Applied Electronics Technology Department, Electronic Technology Division, Stanley Electric, Co., LTD.
