Boosting security in megacities with the internet of things

As urbanization rates grow and our cities become bigger, security challenges await. When things are connected though, it is possible to mitigate risks and improve the quality of life for city dwellers.

Two years ago, I was in Brazil for the World Cup, I had a fantastic time and the only drawback was that on my last day in the country, all my luggage was stolen from the trunk of our car while parked in a “safe” parking lot in broad daylight. This saw us boarding an international flight the next day, travelling very light indeed: wearing only t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops, nothing else. “Any bags to check-in sir?” – Nope. Still, it was all worth it.

Today, with the Olympic Games in full swing, Brazil’s second-most populous city, Rio de Janeiro is once again welcoming thousands of visitors during these few weeks. Like many big cities in South America, safety challenges are not in short supply and when crowds are larger, security forces usually have larger tasks at hand as well, with crime rates ramping up.

It doesn’t always have to be like this though; in the Networked Society, where everything that can benefit from a connection will have one, we will see dramatic improvements in public safety and overall security in cities. Almost every individual thing that we connect helps a bit to achieve this: a connected car can report to authorities straight away when detecting it has been broken into. Connected bags – like the ones being delivered today by a company called bluesmart – are designed so you can track their location anywhere on the planet by using a mobile app on your smartphone. Safety cameras, of course, are already connected and are getting increasingly smarter, capturing thousands of hours of footage, with progressively better resolution, and the ability to report suspicious activities to help locate those “persons of interest” globally.

Rio de Janeiro, host of this year’s Olympic Games has been experiencing for a while the benefits that connectivity can bring to big cities and megacities. After deadly floods and mudslides swept through the city’s Favelas in 2010, a Centralized Operations Center (Centro de Operações Prefeitura Do Rio) was created to track weather events and traffic conditions and centralize the city’s management of utilities. Early warnings and monitoring, accessible in real time via mobile devices, have already made a difference in the lives of cariocas.

Another big Brazilian city, São José dos Campos, has also seen dramatic improvements in safety thanks to connectivity. Since 2012, when the city started implementing a Smart City project, the number of events handled by its Integrated Operations Center increased 15.5%. In 2014, 1,542 incidents were observed compared to 1,335 in the previous year. A solution like this one involved rolling out 100 miles of fiber optic cable in order to have the city’s traffic and municipal guard communications systems connected through Ericsson’s Emergency Response system, which allows users to control and communicate urgent information quickly and efficiently. As a result, the number of public safety incidents has been reduced and the homicide rate has declined from 10.21 to 8.29 per 100,000 inhabitants

Megacities will always have big challenges and as urbanization rates continue to increase relentlessly, we know most cities will soon be very big: in fact, by 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. Are our cities ready to face these challenges?

This post was first published on the Networked Society Blog.