The key elements, modular 5G smart poles, already exist as a pre-commercial product family serving the various needs of cities. Several digital services related e.g. to public safety, green last-mile logistics, autonomous transport and healthy living have been piloted and prepared for commercialization. Together with a secured data platform this all provides a holistic solution, the digital backbone for cities, helping them to turn smart and sustainable.
We have succeeded in implementing a compact cabling solution inside the smart pole, which enables the integrated devices to be connected into the same data transmission and power supply entity. The modularity of the solution, in turn, ensures that devices can be flexibly added and replaced on the smart pole throughout its life cycle. This is a significant competitive advantage.
Jani Linna-Aro, CEO of Orbis Oy
The LuxTurrim5G smart pole concept has been developed to tackle the future needs of cities facing the challenges of sustainable development and digitalisation. It is not really about a light pole, but a whole new element to build the key infrastructure of a smart city – its digital backbone. The smart poles will not only have a 5G base station integrated into it, but also video cameras, radars, lidars, and sensors needed for navigation, weather, temperature, air quality or, for example, carbon dioxide measurements. The solution provides fast and reliable and shareable 5G connectivity and a city-wide sensor/IoT network to gather plenty of different online data. Combined with other data sources via a secured data platform, this enables a variety of data-based services boosting the emergence of smart city data economy. LuxTurrim5G ecosystem has made pioneering work on all these frontiers developing a holistic solution to the needs of cities.
The achievements include extensive technical development and piloting of the smart pole family, related sensors and devices, other smart urban furniture elements, data platform and marketplace and a range of piloted digital services. The unique smart city pilot environment built around the Nokia campus in Espoo, Finland, includes 19 smart poles, two smart and safe bus stops and a total of more than 250 interconnected IoT devices, and a digital twin of the pilot. It has played a key role in the development and piloting and will stay as a living lab for future developments. But much more than technology, the ecosystem partners have worked intensively together to build key capabilities e.g. to tackle data privacy issues, design guidelines for smart cities as well as new business and operational models and understanding of the complex business landscape. One of the key achievements has been building and leading the ecosystem from early ideas to results with high impact.
Data-driven services bring the value
The LuxTurrim5G smart pole network will form the digital backbone of a smart city offering high-speed connectivity and a versatile sensor network. This in turn brings a wide variety of relevant on-line data available e.g. on environment, weather, traffic flows, public safety, usage of energy to be used by the city and companies for specific needs and to create holistic situational awareness. Cities have also big amounts of own data which often is not widely utilized. The project has been developing a data platform that is capable of processing large masses of data from various sources in a reliable and efficient manner, and a data marketplace to enable data-based business.
“Smart cities need this kind of data platform to foster cross-departmental co-operation, as well as to share vital data sets with private enterprise and academia. This provides the basis for an efficient city operation and the creation of intelligent digital services that improve quality of life in the city. In a competitive global environment, businesses and residents will be drawn to safer, greener and more data-driven cities. The 5G smart pole network enables the creation of this rich data marketplace, thus also giving the city a competitive edge over its peers”, says Richard Cooper Global CTO, Government & Cities at Nokia.
For example, combining the data from air quality and weather sensors to other data streams opens many opportunities for new services.
“Together with data on traffic flow and vehicle classification, weather and environmental observations serve to analyze dependencies between traffic, weather, and air quality. Practical benefits of such systems include weather and street dust information to street maintenance contractors and weather warnings to drivers. And, as traffic lights are also integrated into the system by creating green waves, the system can reduce traffic emissions by avoiding unnecessary accelerations”, says Hannamari Jaakkola, Global Market Manager of Urban Weather and Environment at Vaisala.
Towards global smart city markets
The LuxTurrim5G ecosystem has ignited a lot of interest both in Finland and globally. Now that the development of the modular smart pole, related elements and several services has been completed, the consortium is aiming for more extensive pilots in real urban environments. Readiness for smart pole deliveries has been fine-tuned not only with technical development in mind, but also various business models are being prepared. At the same time, the company group is preparing for the transfer from R&D phase to the business.
Building a smart city is a challenging task involving large number of different counterparts. LuxTurrim5G approach delivers the digital backbone as part of an integrated smart city infrastructure, decreasing complexity, reducing the number of parties involved and making it easier to build a smart city. This customer-focused approach has created a lot of interest in LuxTurrim5G worldwide. Growing urbanization creates enormous business opportunities globally. Rapid acceleration from R&D phase to business is now central for the LuxTurrim5G solution.
Reijo Smolander, International Business Innovations, Business Finland
Through the Espoo pilot, the LuxTurrim5G consortium shares an ambitious target to expand to global smart city markets, predicted to reach 1 000 billion euros by 2025. An important gateway to the global market is the World Expo, Expo 2020 Dubai, where the LuxTurrim5G joint offering and two functional smart poles are being showcased by Nokia and partner companies. Several discussions are already on-going for real-life implementations of the LuxTurrim5G solution with potential customers.
Background information
LuxTurrim5G ecosystem partners:
Nokia Bell Labs, Nokia, Premix, Teleste, Vaisala, Indagon, Rumble Tools, Orbis, Tehomet, Destia, Sitowise, Caruna, A-Insinöörit (AINS Group), Link Design & Development, Vediafi, Agora Networks, Sensible 4, L7 Drive, City of Espoo, Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom, VTT, Aalto University, Tampere University, University of Helsinki ja Spinverse (ecosystem leader).
The project is funded by the participating companies and Business Finland.
More information
