Thanks to Ajun, the Mayor’s IT assistant, I am invited to become a founding member of Bandung Smart City council. It is an honor to become part of this exciting endeavor, along with big names like Ilham Habibie, officers from Telkom, high-profile lecturers from ITB, and other tech entrepreneurs.Smart city includes e-government initiatives. While that’s purely software (and thus easier except for the implementation part!), I’m gonna talk about the infrastructure part of Smart City, all these smart sensors that define a city smart. My anchor point is Santander, the prototype of smart city in northern Spain. It has sensors for traffic control, waste management, water quality, air pollution, energy efficiency, public bus location, etc.
Can an Indonesian city follow? There are a few inherent challenges:
- Budgeting. Can the government budget this in an efficient, clean manner?
- Execution. It will need a tremendous effort to install these thousands sensors.
- Theft. In Indonesia, these sensors are at high risk of loss due to theft and vandalism.
- Power. How do we power these sensors efficiently?
- Connectivity. Too expensive if we need to pay Telcos for sending sensor data to the cloud?
Now that Internet of Things (IoT) is taking off, the solution is around the corner.
- What if we can build a platform and ecosystem where people can contribute in buying these sensors as part of their contribution to the city?
- What if we can build a DIY sensors and gateways for the people to install themselves?
- What if we can build these devices as cheap as possible (less than $20) and thus reducing the motivation of theft?
- What if we can use Radio frequency to transmit data so even a single AA battery can last a year?
- What if we use people’s home internet connection for the gateway to send sensor data to the cloud?
This is what me and partner Martin are trying to solve through Geeknesia, our own contribution to society. Support us so we can realize Smart City in our cities by submitting preorder 🙂