THE countdown to a smarter, more connected Jamaica has begun. Six years after the visionary blueprint was unveiled in 2016, New Kingston’s Smart City Demonstration Project is now on the verge of becoming a reality, with its roll-out this year, extended through 2033.

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) and project development firm Tuatara Group have collaborated, promising to redefine urban living across five crucial domains: smart digital services, energy, transportation and mobility, environment, and health.

“We see New Kingston as a tremendous opportunity for the smart city. We think it has great infrastructure; it’s got residential, commercials, businesses, and a huge population of tourists that are coming in. There’s a lot of opportunities here, and we think it’s well suited for the project,” said co-founder of Tuatara Group, Doug Shuster, while presenting a road map for the project at the Jamaica Smart City Forum at the Jamaica Pegasus on Wednesday.

He revealed that a study was done to identify suitable smart technologies for the demonstration and highlighted a few technologies that are to be readily deployed in the area.

“High-definition optical sensors with analytics were key technologies we think is critical for the pilot project, use a cross of variety traffic, parking, theft detection, and flood weather monitoring, but also critically for safety and security,” he revealed.

Shuster explained that the demonstration requires close integration with JamaicaEye to share with public and private buildings security to use their cameras to integrate with digital signage with the smart city app and citizen alerts.

In the future, he says more technologies can be integrated, such as panic buttons, blue lights with immediate police response, and drones for detecting the explosion from a bullet,

“JPS is currently doing a technology evaluation for some of these devices from several companies and has some devices that are both integrated directly into the smart LED street lighting system,” he said.

The LED street lights are expected to aid with air quality monitoring as well. Shuster acknowledges that while some air quality monitoring is taking place, it’s being conducted at large expensive reference stations, and there is a revolution in technology for low-cost quality air monitoring. “These [devices] can be directly integrated directly in the smart LED street lighting system; they are relatively inexpensive, they can be put up and installed quickly, and they can be moved very easily around the city in order to determine different hot spots where you might want to detect pollution. They can provide constant continuous monitoring that can be shared with different agencies as well as with the public and can alert people to air quality incidents and whether they should maybe stay inside or be aware of those problems,” Shuster said while pointing to a PowerPoint presentation showing the device. Long term, however, Shuster says collaboration will be needed to drive the success of a digital city, between the technologies, within the sectors, across sectors and the sharing of resources across government agencies, utilities, and public and private sectors.

The smart city demonstration will also include public access to Wi-Fi. Within the public Wi-Fi platform, city users will be able to connect to various aspects of the smart city apps and learn about other agencies and their technologies and solutions. There will also be digital signage in the city to provide public messaging.

“In the future, what we see for New Kingston and other places in Jamaica is an integrated smart transportation management centre that integrates the public transport, the JITS [Jamaica Intelligent Transportation System] and the UTMS [Urban Traffic Management System] projects, and also advanced smart public transportation systems again integrated with things like JamaicaEye, using cameras on public transportation, using GIS tracking, and using these advanced technologies to really navigate the public transportation system to be smart and effective,” said Shuster.

The plans for transport were outlined by Oshane Lynn, an intelligent transportation systems (ITS) application developer for the National Works Agency. He explained that the entire fibre infrastructure was completed last year across the island to eliminate the reliance on bandwidth and the restrictions it comes with, to reduce congestion, and travel time, and to improve road safety. Variable message signs, which are led signs that were tested out with the words “drive carefully” have been erected. “It’s a public presentation of what is to come. What they’re supposed to be doing is utilising the traffic safety cameras, the dispatchers can monitor the traffic, and if anything happens, if there’s an accident on the road, traffic can be re-routed using the variable message signs to notify drivers to redirect traffic,” Lynn explained.

Jamaica’s incident management system has 312 traffic lights, 165 of which are currently connected remotely. But Lynn revealed an even newer technology: the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide more convenience to road users. Previously, sensors were built into the ground to detect motor vehicles at traffic lights; however, the frequent digging of roads presented a challenge, interfering with the infrastructure. Traffic lights now have video cameras to detect a vehicle.

“We create a virtual zone, and the AI learns to see what the size of the vehicle is, and it detects if a vehicle is present, so you won’t have to wait. In older sections of the country, you see situations where you’re at the light, but there’s no one there, and it’s not turning because it’s on a fixed cycle, meaning it is waiting in a pre-programmed plan with the technology. If there’s nothing there, the main light will never change, so it doesn’t interrupt the traffic flow,” Lynn revealed.

In addition to smart traffic lights, traffic lights will soon include a backup battery system to keep running in the event of an electrical shortage for 48 hours to reduce the risk of congestion due to non-functional lights.