Before you read the article ahead, think about the air conditioner in your home. What does the device do? It accepts the desired temperature from you, and then regulates the air temperature before maintaining it at the new normal set by you. A similar, but opposite behavior is demonstrated by the heating systems, that maintain the temperature inside a room or a structure at a desired constant. However, what I am trying to catch your attention to is the fact that we have got systems in place that can monitor and regulate the environments (albeit artificial ones) to the normal set by us as per our preferences. What if took this concept out of the room, in the open, at a macro level?
Well, no. I am not asking you to have the entire atmosphere air conditioned to a certain temperature. Or am I? What if tomorrow we could have a fine autonomous fabric of connected intelligence draping our cities and monitoring each and every vital health parameter of a society as if it is a living being? Sounds exciting? Let’s have a deep dive into the new possibility of tomorrow – an Autonomous City Monitoring System powered by AI.
Air Quality Monitoring Analytics
Ubiquitous air quality sensors will be the new truth of tomorrow. We will have tiny invisible sensors keeping a tab on the air quality parameters all across a city or a town. The level of carbon dioxide, particulate matter and toxic gases among other things in the air will be closely monitored. The data will be captured from traffic junctions, residential complexes, hospital perimeters, school premises and industrial areas to name a few. The entire data will be churned for insights, not at a central cloud location, but very much close to the devices themselves. This is the magic spelled by edge intelligence. All the necessary initial analytics happens close to the device and the sensors, so that the crucial decisions are made, communicated and executed much swifter than it would have been through cloud.
Once the air pollution levels go above a certain threshold, the Autonomous City Monitor will get alerted and will take necessary steps to bring the deviation back to the normal. This can manifest in the form of automatic instructions to the city residents to follow the odd-even principle for personal vehicles – wherein the odd-numbered and the even-numbered vehicles ply on alternate days. Or something like instructing the more polluting factories to curb their emissions and revisit their pollution-countering systems.
Connected Health Monitoring Systems
The pandemic of COVID-19 went out of control because the city of origin of the disease failed to coordinate well with other cities of the nation and the other nations as well. The lack of timely communication led to the uncontrolled spread of the disease that could have otherwise been contained to a specific region. The health monitoring systems of the future will be equipped to identify potential cases of incurable communicable diseases and will sound an alert in the nation, along with alerting other nations as well. The enabling technology will be the connected wearable health devices that keep monitoring the vital health parameters of citizens and identify any potential symptom of an incurable communicable disease. This will ensure that any incidence of a threatening disease does not disrupt the equilibrium of the other regions. Moreover, autonomous contact tracing shall find out the people who have been in contact of the diseased individual and instruct the local medical authorities to quarantine the potent threat. This will help to monitor the cities of tomorrow and keep them safeguarded against outbreak of any disease that threatens to tear apart the social fabric. Though it will be subject to the willingness of state governments to keep the system transparent.
Intelligent Water Management Systems
Countries, like India, have witnessed riots between states over the issue of water sharing. When rivers go dry, the upstream states try to consume their share of water by sucking out every drop, leaving the downstream states parched of any water. This leads to political conflicts that span over months and divert time and attention of the central governments to defuse the situation. Technology can prove to be a great ally in this area, by bringing predictive analytics at disposal of the states.
Based on weather data and forecasts, the water management systems can predict the rainfall and approximate volume of water to be available for the next few months through predictive modeling and data analytics. Any predicted shortfall of water can be communicated to the states well in advance, which can enable the states to get involved in proactive issue resolution and demand for intervention from the government at the Center, rather than getting entangled in violent conflicts at a later point of hopelessness. With the help of predictive analytics and autonomous choice of the best procedure by taking reference from historical steps taken, the water management systems can avert water crises and maintain the cities and states in their equilibrium.
Fighting Crime through Aerial Surveillance
Crime cases are always a headache for police and citizens as it disrupts the law and order in the cities. Police forces deploy their personnel in areas where crime rates soar and yet sometimes, we have a few pockets of cities that go unmonitored or under-monitored.
An autonomous crime fighting system can prove to be effective with the diligent use of drones for aerial surveillance. Based on the number of criminal cases reported in different parts of the city, the autonomous AI system can plan and distribute its fleet of policing drones across the city and assign more drones to areas witnessing higher crime rates. Though drones may not be that effective in fighting off the criminals, unless they are equipped with rubber bullets, tazers or other disabling equipment, they will at least be able to help police forces with better monitoring and call attention to any possible anomaly in the usual law and order of any particular region in the city. This will help to keep the law and order equilibrium maintained and make cities and towns safer than ever.
Conclusion
Autonomous connected intelligent systems are soon going to be the new reality of tomorrow. The entire city management will be carried out by AI systems that work on a strong foundation of historical data to guide them, while also learning on the go not only from their own cities, but also the best practices of other cities by connecting through their city management systems. With the right monitoring, the cities of tomorrow will become more sustainable and more reassuring for the generation to come.
