The City of Kitchener officially opens its Digital Innovation Lab
Posted Nov 28, 2017 01:47:31 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Better living through the Internet of Things: that’s the goal of the City of Kitchener’s Digital Innovation Lab, which officially opened today.
Lab director Karl Allen-Muncey says the city already has thousands of new LED street lights with censors that can be turned brighter, or made more dim, as needed.
That ‘mesh network’ of censors can now be applied to other daily life needs.
Allen-Muncy says other possible applications could include online utility meters, so the city can just download how much gas or water your house uses, instead of wasting the labour time of having a meter-reader going door-to-door.
But he stresses here the point is not to put people out of jobs.
Rather, it’s to help city staff use time more efficiently.
Allen-Muncey says another possible application might be censors that could tell your smart phone where a parking spot is available.
He says there are basically four main areas: efficiencies; costs; insight; and user experience.
Kitchener mayor, Berry Vrbanovic says the new lab shows how Kitchener is ‘punching above its weight’ when it comes to innovation and high-tech industries.
This is one of the first municipal innovation labs in Canada dedicated to the exploration of the Internet of Things.
