The era we are living in is known as Smart age and that is a befitting name since we are witnessing everything going ‘smart’. We have seen smartphones take over the world and now we are part of a revolutionary change where everything is becoming interconnected. Keeping these factors in mind, the White House launched the Smart America Challenge which was aimed at showing how the Internet of Things could be used to help/benefit the American society. The announcement was made a year ago and during this year, Intel has really stepped up to the challenge by creating America’s first Smart City; San Jose.
San Jose, thanks to Intel, now employs the Internet of Things in order to monitor the city’s vital statistics related to traffic, air quality and transportation. The idea was not only to create new jobs but also to allow for new business opportunities. Intel’s Smart City is the first of its kind in US, as to how Intel achieved this; sensors were installed all over San Jose that are capable of measuring water and air pollution, traffic flow, noise, energy consumption, public transport frequency and communication that is being carried out. The acquired data is then transmitted to City government officials via mobile apps in order to improve the current setup.
Intel hopes that this approach will allow for the cities to consume their resources in a much better and efficient way. Intel’s Smart City created jobs for about 25,000 tech related professionals because frankly, the data is gigantic and we need people to manage it. Intel is also tweaking the security systems, which will play a vital role if this idea catches on (we don’t see any reason why it won’t be).
The Smart America program’s primary goal is to ascertain how Internet of Things can improve facilities and resources such as security, energy, climate, home building, healthcare and what not.