Silver Spring Networks and IoT
Silver Spring Networks has been extremely successful worldwide at delivering data platforms to drive innovation. So it was a pleasure to invite the European Commercial Director, Smart Cities and Lighting, Brian McGuigan to talk to us at our Future Cities Forum on 6th March at the IET, London about city attitudes to embracing the Internet of Things.
Brian was clear that within Europe there are different cultural histories meaning that there is a variance in attitude. However there is a community appreciation for the installation of smart city lighting reducing costs by sometimes as much as 50% as in his Copenhagen project. A 'Playable City' initiative in Bristol has also meant that citizens have enjoyed the benefits of projectors on street lighting and musical incentives to bridge crossings.
Brian observed that as yet citizens still trust Google with their private data far more than local authorities in the buy-in to the internet of things and he discusses the range of priorities for cities in the interview above.
Silver Spring Networks was joined on the panel by Head of Transport, Brian Matthews at Milton Keynes Council, airport design expert Henrik Rothe of leit-werk and Cranfield University and Simon Payne, former Director of the Environment at Cambridge City Council and now running his own consultancy, Lambsquay Consultancy.