Sunderland City Council has soft launched a new interactive mobile app for residents and visitors.
Named City of Sunderland Discover, it is currently being tested with plans for further development.
Liz St Louis, the council’s director for smart cities, reported on its launch at the UKAuthority Smart Places and Smart Communities conference.
She said the app is a one stop information hub which connects with the city’s free Wi-Fi network and contains a function to provide updates and alerts depending on the user’s location.
“If, for example, you’ve chosen culture and you’re walking past our heritage museum it will ping and tell you what the latest exhibitions are,” she said.
“We’ve also started to link it with some of our sensor networks; it links into our traffic and motion network so you can see at any time which kind of traffic level and air quality is in the city. We intend to build on it as we go.”
The app also provides for offers and discounts with local businesses.
Connectivity and IoT
St Louis also provided an update on Sunderland’s Smart Cities Programme, saying it now provides free Wi-Fi in the city centre and the Roker area, a city-wide long range, low powered network and fibre broadband from four major operators. Over the three months to the end of May the free Wi-Fi averaged over 50,000 connections per month, almost half through the Eduroam network for students.
A range of internet of things solutions is being deployed, such as smart bins, road temperature sensors for winter gritting and movements of lifebuoys by the river; and there are plans to begin using them to measure damp and mould in people’s homes during the autumn.
They are also being used in an energy-efficiency programme for major buildings and in a roll out of assistive technology in the homes of vulnerable people.
Catch up on Liz St Louis' presentation below:
