Say goodbye to the mean streets of
the city. Say hello to "green streets" instead.
A downtown area using the digital
banner display to promote an upcoming event.
That’s green as in more
environmentally friendly—as well as cash-producing—for modern municipalities.
The notion of the big city being a gritty, dark place at night could become
passé with the availability of a new IT solution called Intellistreets. The
product, from Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Illuminating Concepts, transforms
simple city street lights into conduits for "green" living, emergency
preparedness, entertainment and even ad revenue.
It all started in 2002 at the Henry Ford Museum’s Greenfield Village
in Dearborn, Mich., where planners wanted to introduce audio in a
historic
park without building unsightly speakers. Illuminating Concepts stepped
in to
build the speakers within the light poles. The company then added to
the tech
enhancements within the poles, including wireless communications for
security
officers; alert function; and programmable lighting control to dim and
increase
lighting as traffic time demands, saving on energy costs without any
employee
monitoring.
The Intellistreets system operates
on a wireless mesh network, providing communication among all light poles
within the network, as well as back and forth between individual light poles to
an interface server. This means if communication throughout the system is
disrupted for any reason, each light pole has the ability to continue to
function independently.
As for revenue opportunity
expansion, the Intellistreets system offers digital video signage in the form
of a large LED banner on a light pole, much like the vinyl banners currently
seen in city environments. Unlike vinyl banners, however, LED banners can
display a wide variety of continually changing content, including still images
and video. This opens up possibilities for advertising, as well as local public
service announcements that would, for example, guide large crowds to public
transportation stations during a big festival event.
While a number of these
applications aren’t new, the integration of so many within something as common
as a light pole is groundbreaking, says Mike McNalley, director of Business Energy
Services for Detroit-based DTE Energy, which provides utility services for the city. In
the end, there’s a tangible economic effect. “This technology brings people to
downtowns like Detroit, rather than simply lighting the streets,” he states.
As for the future, executives
behind Intellistreets anticipate expanding to offer parking-meter capabilities
and even recharging stations for electric cars on the product’s light poles.
“We have the potential to transform formerly
‘pedestrian’ urban corridors into interactive environments that promote warmth,
vitality, continuity, security, sustainability and community,” says Ron
Harwood, president of Illuminating Concepts.
