Smart Street Lighting System for Smart Cities

While walking through a neighborhood at night, we often see a patch of darkness around a burnt-out street light. This small problem can cause some serious safety issues, especially if there are only a few lights illuminating the street.

Smart street lighting systems have the ability to eliminate this problem completely. Smart cities can utilize these smart systems with advanced connectivity and sensors to customize their lights for every situation. This includes responding to emergency situations, malfunctioning of street lights, and weather conditions.

Why Do We Need Smart Street Lighting Systems?

Nearly 70% of all accidents involving pedestrians happen at night. One of the biggest reasons for these accidents is poor visibility. This is because headlights are not always able to illuminate pedestrians until it is too late.

Smart street lighting can improve pedestrian visibility and reduce the number of pedestrian and car accidents. These accidents cause severe injuries and even deaths. A smart city lighting system can considerably reduce the number of such collisions.

Smart Street Lighting Systems Improve Visibility

Current lighting systems lack connectivity and are programmed to illuminate only in set timings. On the other hand, smart street lighting systems are based on IoT and hence have advanced connectivity. This allows them to illuminate whenever the need arises.

Conventional lighting systems can only turn on or off. On the other hand, smart lighting systems use high-end sensors, which allow them to adjust illumination levels in response to the changing conditions automatically.

This ensures that there is improved visibility at all times, especially when there are drivers or pedestrians nearby.

Smart Street Lights Lead to Faster Communication

Smart street lighting systems are interconnected and feed the sensory data to a cloud platform. If a street light is to malfunction for some reason, then it will be immediately detected by the smart lighting system. This detection will be reported to the cloud platform, which will, in turn, send an alert to the nearby technicians. Hence the problem will be fixed as soon as possible.

A smart street lighting system can be used for pinpointing the location of an emergency. This can be very helpful for law enforcement personnel and the first responders. For instance, if the sensors of a street light detect smoke, then it may indicate a car crash nearby. An alert will be sent to the relevant departments, and the first responders will be notified. Hence, more lives will be saved.

Smart Street Lights for weather conditions and energy saving

Smart street lights can also be programmed to better respond to weather conditions. This will allow the street lights to have increased illumination when there is a rain or storm. It will further help in improving visibility and avoiding accidents.

The best part of a smart street lighting system is that it can be used for saving energy. A street light can turn itself off if there is no driver or pedestrian nearby. And turn itself on again once a person is detected nearby. This will prevent a street light from staying on all night long and be used only when required. It will help in saving energy and financial costs.