Author: Milos Milisavljevic, CEO of Strawberry energy 

If there was an app giving you real time data about the most crowded shops to avoid or the longest check-out lines during the Christmas shopping fever, you’d welcome that, wouldn’t you? It would require a comprehensively vast digital network of IoT devices, people counters, interconnected shopping malls, a massive amount of data processed in real time. Of course, it doesn’t exist. At least not yet. Furnishing cities with smart technology, building IoT infrastructure and sustainable solutions is slowly becoming the big talking point, a task on every local government’s agenda.

When you dedicate yourself to furnishing your home every detail matters. You start from picking out the comfortable, nicely looking pieces that fulfill your standards of functionality and esthetics. And when you’re done, you call it home. In the recent decade our homes have become increasingly smarter with gadgets helping us or entertaining us every step of the way.

It is no surprise that the need for embedding technology in our public spaces has also become a prerequisite for being comfortable and efficient while running errands out and about the town.

Just like our home, we all want our cities to follow the development, to upgrade and start adapting to our life already submerged in technology so deep that it is an integral part of who we are today as civilisation. But what does it take to furnish a city, to equip it with smart solutions that would not only make our life easier, but also reduce costs, be easy on the local budget and not harm the environment? Is it possible?

In order to talk about the smart city furniture, let’s start with the obvious. What is street furniture to begin with? It includes benches, traffic barriers, bollards, post boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traffic signs, bus stops, tram stops, taxi stands, public lavatories, fountains, public sculptures, and waste receptacles. When we want to make all that street furniture “smart” we actually want for it to be more functional, to make our life easier without the cost to the environment.

Smart waste management doesn’t waste time

A decade ago, garbage trucks and sanitation workers would go around at precisely scheduled times, every day, to empty the bins around town so they’d be clean and ready for the new busy day. Of course, a bin in a park near a popular picnic spot or at a busy street is much more likely to be full by the afternoon. Sometimes overflowing with trash by the mid-day. Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow sanitation services would be able to know exactly which bin needs attention and when so that they could plan the collecting routes more efficiently?

Today, smart bins are connected to WiFi and equipped with fill-level sensors that track the situation in real time and send data that the bin needs to be taken care of. Majority of smart bins can be found in France, Germany and the UK, but also in various USA cities and Canada. It’s not a surprise that smart waste management ideas that are sustainable, reasonably priced and efficient in the long term are in high demand.

Next stop: Smart city

Waiting for the bus is a dramatically different experience than 15 years ago when there were no smartphones (as we know them today) or mobile Internet to pass the time. In recent years smart city development has offered us another WiFI connected convenience and experience: a smart bus stop. While you wait for the bus you can check the real time traffic data, pay your bills, top up your phone credit, check pollen and noise levels and in case of emergency there are emergency call boxes, defibrillators and fire extinguishers. Singapore’s smart bus stop network offers free WiFi, phone chargers and in some cases even bookshelves where people can read and swap for the books they have already read. Barselona’s smart bus stops offer detailed tourist info and maps and free WiFi so in a way, every smart bus stop is essentially a tourist info desk.

Stuck in traffic? Not if you’re smart!

Copenhagen municipal government claims that 25,000 tons of CO2 will be reduced by 2025 compared to 2011 levels. How do they plan to carry out that task? Through the city’s ITS (Intelligent Transport System) program. Controllers built in existing traffic lights on busy intersections will control the traffic in real time by favouring cyclists and public transportation. According to globalexplorer.com “Overall, the travel time of cyclists will be reduced by 10% and travel time for buses is expected to decrease by up to 20%… ITS will help Copenhagen achieve its vision to have 75% of all trips in the city be by bike, by public transport, or on foot by 2025.” Benefits for the environment that this measure would bring are quite substantial and if successful, will once again put Copenhagen on the list of one of the most successful cities when it comes to implementing smart technologies to elevate the quality of living.

Smart bench — The new benchmark for smart cities

In 2011, a small startup Strawberry Energy wanted to find new ways to reimagine the city furniture by adding solar panels and phone charging ports powered by solar energy to their project — Strawberry tree. It was a success because it recognized the growing need for connectivity and addressing the environmental issues. In 2015 the first smart bench was installed in London followed by the network of smart benches in 2016 and the presence in more than 25 cities in Europe.

Smart bench has reinvented the “bench time” as we know it. We still sit on a bench to relax, meet up, take a break or eat take out lunch. But as we do it, we also browse the internet using the free and fast WiFi, charge the phone or check the environmental data for the area.

Advertisers gained a new territory to expand their influence and reach the audience. Branded smart bench also offers a branded landing page that pops up when people connect to free WiFi on the bench, allowing an advertiser to display a more personal and customized message for the desired audience depending on the time, weather conditions or current events. The smart bench measures engagement, number of chargings and visitor count, representing a valuable insight into consumer behavior, and above all, promotes the advertiser’s CSR efforts and positions the company as an environmentally aware and proactive.

At the end of year 2020 we already have smart waste bins, smart benches, smart bus stops and smart traffic lights. What the future holds for us and our cities? As it is expected that the AI propels into our life more prominently, no one can reliably predict what impact it will have on urban infrastructure, community engagement and digital transformation. What we can say for sure is that street furniture will definitely become smarter, even cooler and more sustainable.

Do something smart for your city! We’re here to answer any questions! Let’s talk! Contact us at info@eliteareas.gr .

Author: Bojana Borković, Business Development Executive at Strawberry energy

Smart and digital technologies have changed our lives so drastically in the last decade that practically, there is not an industry, field of work or creative process that doesn’t require some sort of digitalization and tech application. Architects and engineers are especially motivated to apply smart technologies, not only in order to optimize the results and improve the efficiency, but to keep up with tech trends and answer to the development of future cities and people’s lives, now completely immersed in tech.

In order to create a smart, digitized, but above all — human future cities, and deliver the real value for the communities, where the experience and quality of life of the smart tech users are a priority, we’ve assembled some guidelines that professionals from the industry might want to pay attention to and apply in their future projects.

The four key points smart furniture in public spaces should focus on are: tourism, community, disabled people and family.

Fulfilling these four points makes smart city furniture overall beneficial for the quality of life in the public spaces.

Smart Bench has already proven to be a popular and efficient project that impacts all four domains of smart furniture public realm. Apart from being a popular meeting point and complementing the city’s outdoors by appealing design, here are some important benefits that Smart Bench provides:

1. Tourism — a fast and free WiFi hotspot, essential for tourists when they want to access important information on their location, plan routes, check maps, send messages to friends and family and post to social media.

Having a smart bench in the public spaces also means never having to worry about your phone battery running out while you’re out having fun. Smart Bench offers charging cords plus wireless charging ports to suit all types of smartphones. By offering this kind of high level of connectivity, Smart Bench allows a more valuable outdoor experience for all tourists and members of the community.

2. Community — Benches in public spaces have always represented a beloved point of social interactions for young and old, but also a piece of oasis in an urban landscape. As our lives become more tech — dependent and digitized, Smart Bench needs to fulfill the social aspect and utility of the old fashion bench, but also to support the modern-day thirst for technology, smart design and sustainability. Our Smart Bench encompasses all of these properties, providing a great asset for any playground or communal area where people from the community, families can interact, take a break and enjoy the surroundings.

From the social participation point, Smart Bench represents a valuable means for the local governments to obtain information and data that may help the decision-making process when it comes to introducing bills and measures important for the quality of life of the community. The data obtained from the Smart Bench can give a better insight on foot traffic at that location, number of chargings speaks of the mobile usage and technological needs of the people frequenting that particular location etc.

3. Accessibility to disabled — It is important to emphasize the accessibility of Smart Bench to disabled persons. It is designed to be easily accessible to all people with disabilities and provide a safe and valuable experience for equal opportunities across the whole society. WiFi connection allows integration in the City IoT platform or integration in the city’s emergency control center. These possibilities are key to creating safer, more efficient smart cities and could enhance the quality of life immensely in the future, if applied throughout the urban zones.

4. Family: What every parent wants is a safe environment for their children to play, grow and learn. Smart Bench is a great asset to any playground and neighborhood. Smart Bench offers an opportunity for children to learn about renewable sources of energy, to practice responsible and sustainable behaviour and check the weather data, air quality together with their parents. Parents can charge their phones while watching the kids play, but also provide a valuable learning lesson. After they charge their phone and connect to the free WiFi network, they can talk to their youngsters about green energy and explain how our phones can be charged using nothing but solar energy. We would like to set the younger generations onto the path of preserving nature and sustainable energy resources because that is the right way to prepare them for the future where these topics will be substantial points of economic growth and overall well being of the city dwellers. Smart Bench has 0 carbon footprint and is solar-powered, allowing the members of the community to enjoy the connectivity and benefits of energy in a sustainable and responsible way.

As we head into the second decade of the 21st century, it becomes even more important that the technological progress and life improvements that come with it, stay complementary with the social and personal needs of every member of the community, families, elderly citizens and disabled. To provide a more modern but at the same time, efficient and equal opportunities benefits in the realm of smart IoT experience.

We’re here to answer any questions! Contact us at info@eliteareas.gr .

Don’t move out of the city yet! Things are changing!

Can you give a quick YES or NO, answer to this question:

Do you think that big cities like Los Angeles, Paris, Sao Paolo or Hong Kong, will still be the places where people would want to start a family 50 years from now?

If your answer is NO, then what would it take for them to become more livable, to take care of everybody’s needs?

Free public transport? Complete transition to renewable sources of energy? A U-turn in traffic and overall infrastructure development?

There is really only one correct answer: They need to become SMART CITIES.

Here are top 5 ways smart cities can enhance the quality of people’s lives:

1. Smart cities are data-driven — traffic data, weather conditions, transportation routes, congestions, all data is processed in a centralized city system and citizens are informed of the best options to avoid delays or problems during their daily commutes and routines.

2. Smart cities are people centered. They include real people’s habits and mobility in decision making. This helps city planners in creating the best possible solutions to reduce crowds, prevent high energy consumptions and plan more green spaces where necessary. Traffic jams, garbage disposal, city parking, are all better monitored if smart city technology is implemented, and it can ultimately help citizens manage their routines and tasks in the most efficient way.

3. Smart cities are sustainable — They encourage and explore options for sourcing renewable energy and lowering carbon footprint in urban areas: energy-efficient buildings, air quality and noise level sensors, electric vehicles, they are all part of the city wide solutions for sustainable development.

4. Smart cities are safer — IoT and other smart city technologies can help first responders in getting critical information on an incident faster and with more reliability. Smart street furniture like Smart Benches, smart bus stops, can be connected to emergency services network and provide an easily accessible S.O.S. call. Possibilities are endless and there are many ways in which smart city technology like IoT can increase residents’ safety.

5. Authorities get faster and better feedback from citizens — Well connected and informed citizens are more likely to be involved in current city issues, to engage in the local community and report problems. When city authorities provide apps and smart IoT systems that enable faster and easier feedback, more citizens are inclined to report the local problems and engage, which leads to better insights in real and pressing problems of the people living in certain area.

We see smart urban street furniture as an integral part of smart city development. Our solar Smart Bench networks already help local governments and companies in more than 23 cities to make better decisions about public places, promote their brands and deliver important info in a sustainable and interesting way.

We have a very developed and vibrant partnership network, contact us if you are considering expanding your portfolio!

To improve your company’s CSR, have a look at our most popular street solar furniture and contact us to get a specially tailored, affordable offer!

We’re here to answer any questions! Contact us at info@eliteareas.gr .