IV. Smart cities

Improving safety and efficiency

Smart cities:

Improving safety and efficiency

Cities are growing at an unprecedented rate. In fact, according to data from the United Nations, 68 percent of the world’s
population will live in cities by 2050.⁶ Public safety is the first- or second-most important initiative for mayors and citizens across
the United States. The advent of 5G has the potential to make cities significantly smarter and safer. Today, the existing connections for critical services are usually fiber, but the cost has made expansion an expensive proposition. Although people tend to focus on the higher speeds of 5G, the lower latency, higher bandwidth, greater density, and network slicing have major implications for the future of smart cities. Reducing and deterring crime and increasing collaboration during incidents can make our cities safer—and
who doesn’t want that?

In a smart city, the ability to make decisions in real time can mean the difference between life and death. Keeping citizens safe
is a top priority, whether it’s lowering and preventing crime or reducing the number of accidents. For example, sensors that detect traffic lights and road conditions can help emergency vehicles get to the scene of an accident in less time.

Video monitoring and surveillance

The low latency of 5G has particular implications for video-as-a-sensor, which can be used for crowd monitoring,
asset utilization, parking space monitoring, traffic analysis, and pedestrian safety. Today’s cities have thousands of
cameras deployed using fiber and 4G LTE connections, and 5G will enhance their capabilities.

5G will improve the effectiveness of real-time video and how it’s used by first responders. Currently, if officers go out of
range from an access point, they lose signal quality or connectivity. With 5G, a high-bandwidth connection, and a secure uplink, video can turn into a real-time tactical feed. With this feed, someone at a central location could coordinate with officers in real time, improving situational awareness for everyone. Drones launched from a tactical vehicle also could share that information.

Instead of looking at surveillance video after the fact, video can be viewed in real time for faster responses. With real-time video, responders could immediately detect smoke from a fire, criminal activity, or traffic accidents.

This level of video analytics requires computing power, and the existing options are to either process the video on the camera or backhaul it to a central data center. However, camera capacity is limited and there’s not enough bandwidth to backhaul so much video in real time. Because of this, video analysis is generally only used for historical and forensic purposes. The limitations in
latency and reliability also prevent video from being used for safety purposes. However, the increase in edge computing resources with 5G will make it possible to perform analytics across multiple incidents. The lower latency and secure links through network slicing will be important when transporting critical real-time video.