LoRaWAN at the Core of a Smart City
LoRaWAN as a Common Technological Basis for Public Service Platforms in Lisbon
Lisbon is paving the way to the smart city: Research by Nuno Cruz, Nuno Cota and João Tremoceiro has enabled the deployment of a city-wide LoRa-network that universally integrates all individual public service networks. All facts and figures derived from: Cruz, Nuno, Nuno Cota, and João Tremoceiro. 2021. "LoRaWAN and Urban Waste Management—A Trial" Sensors 21, no. 6: 2142.
The Smart Lisbon initiative aims to integrate all public services of a smart city into a single Network Platform
Since 2016, the research team from FIT (Future Internet Technologies), an interdisciplinary research group from ISEL (Lisbon Institute of Engineering), have tested different network options to establish public tender guidelines and requirements for a common network in Lisbon, Portugal.
The municipality of Lisbon (CML) commissioned research from FIT/ISEL in order to find a technology most suitable to provide a common platform that integrates all public services and their respective networks in Lisbon. Public tender rules in Portugal dictate that contracts for public service solutions, such as for municipal waste management, fire departments or public healthcare, may only run for a maximum of three years.
Once the contracts expire, a new public call for tenders occurs, which means that the solution vendor in that specific area may change as a result of a more cost-efficient or progressive solution compared to the previous one.
The drawback of the public tender system is that costly adaptations may have to be made every time a new vendor for supply of the various services is selected, as well as the existence of an internal network for each seperate public service. The cooperation between FIT/ISEL and CML formed the basis for the Lisboa Inteligente (Smart Lisbon) initiative to determine a system that would integrate all public services into a common network basis.
A legacy 2G cellular system monitors the fill levels of waste containers in Lisbon. With a new LoRa system, this waste management network would be integrated with networks of other services like fire departments or healthcare.
